Making a basic cheese

LiveScience has an article explaining the history of cheese. It talks about how every type of cheese was not developed to be paired with a certain type of food, but the result of environmental forcing factors and other constraints. It also lays out the 8 basic steps in making any cheese:

Step 1—Setting: Bacteria (either already swimming around in the milk or added to it) and enzymes derived from the stomach linings of milk-producing mammals and called rennet are added to the milk. The rennet shaves off the hydrophilic surface layer of the casein, causing the micelles to coagulate into what is called the curd.

For the rest of the eight steps, squeezing out the water, or liquid whey, from the cheese is a major goal, depending on the type of cheese. For example, cheddar cheese starts with a moisture content of 87 percent and that has to be reduced down to 37 percent, while brie retains more of its whey.

Step 2—Cutting: The curd is “cut” into smaller particles—the smaller the particle, the less water it holds, thus more whey is expelled from the curd. (So drier cheeses like cheddar will be cut into smaller particles than moister cheeses like brie.)

Step 3—Cooking: The curd is heated and stirred, which expels more whey.

“For some cheeses like Parmigiano Reggiano, they’re cooked to very high temperatures with considerable stirring for long periods of time,” Kindstedt said. “At the other extreme, some cheeses like brie, traditional brie, receive essentially no heating, no stirring, no cooking.”

Step 4—Draining: Draining separates more whey from the curd, depending on how dry the final cheese is supposed to be.

Step 5—Knitting: This step overlaps with draining; as the whey drains away, the curd particles come into contact with each other and stick into a bigger mass.

Step 6—Pressing: Weight is applied to the cheese to give it its final shape and to squeeze out more whey, depending on the type of cheese of course.

Step 7—Salting: Salt can be added by sprinkling or rubbing it on the cheese or by submerging the cheese in a salt brine; it continues to draw out whey.

Step 8—Special applications: These can include applying specific environmental conditions such as humidity and temperature or physical manipulations like turning the cheese while it ages.