I like food related hobbies; I’ve tried some candy making, soda making, and those are fun. Cheese making on the other hand sounds like it wouldn’t be worth it for me. I like cheese, but getting all the equipment and ingredients seems like a lot of trouble for a lot of cheese I wouldn’t be able to eat quickly enough and not be able to try new things very often. This is what Home Cheese Making has shown me.
I know the process can take time, but between the months you have to wait for most things, the very specialty ingredients, and the very precise temperature and humidity controls needed, I’m pretty sire this one is just going to be one of those hobbies that I might read about but not likely actually try. Finding milk not from the grocery store that’s basically from the cow fresh is not practical where I live, and I don’t have the space for any sort of storage with that amount of atmosphere control.
I could probably manage something like cottage cheese which I like and doesn’t require anything too crazy or long term, likewise for the “30 minute mozzarella”. The problem for me though is also that the cottage cheese needs to sit at 72 degrees (nearly room temperature) basically overnight. I have two cats. Do we see the problem here? Same general issue for mascarpone and cream cheese.
Another problem would be that for a lot of the other kinds of cheeses, like cheddar (one of my favorites), you need a press (as in a device) for the post-curd but pre-cheese stage. The uni-tasker is not something I have much room or patience for, and this feels like nothing if not that. Also, even with the build your own diagram, getting the precise pressures seems like it’d be difficult to determine without some kind of expert involvement, unless you know the exact weight of something like your cast iron skillet, and have multiple weights available.
I also don’t feel like I’d want to make cinnamon rolls with home-made crème fraiche, or muffins with home made cream cheese. Seems like a waste. Homemade mac and cheese for me takes more than one type of cheese, etc., so I’m not sold on the final section of the book with a bunch of recipes that involve cheese. Given the slightly snobbish tone in places in the book, I assume that’s the intention of the section, and while I can see wanting ways to use the pounds of cheese you’d generate, it feels like more work than it’s worth.
