I am one who loves trying to make at home that which sensible people buy from a store for half the price and one-thousandth the effort.
Thus I wish to embark on the task of creating home-made cheese (jjimmydale, anyone?). Has anyone tried it? What equipment is needed? What were the results like? Any recipes available?
Thanks for your feedback!
Certainly it’s possible. I had a chemistry book as a kid that told me how to make cottage cheese. I never did it, though, because, at best, I’d have ended up with cottage cheese.
Seriously, though, cheesemaking is an ancient art. I’ve no doubt you can find suppliers on the 'net that will give you the rennets and cheescloths and whatever else you need to make a variety of cheeses.
Unfortunately, the only sites I can find are recipes for cottage cheese (:eek: same reaction as you), or industrial supplies. Hence my post.
see what you mean, what about this:
By the way have you made bread, don’t know about cheese but bread… very rewarding.
Blessed are the cheesemakers…
Yeah, I’ve made bread from scratch. The aroma alone is worth the effort.
I’m just tucking into a loaf of jjimm brand semi-wholemeal that came out of the oven this morning. Fantastic. I am cheating, though, coz I have a bread maker.
Have also made demi-glace (interesting), wine (yuk), beer (worse), and I like doing my own pizzas from scratch (apart, of course, from making the cheese - I can’t get the buffaloes to stay still for long enough to milk them).
Would that be just cheese makers or all manufacturers of dairy products? 
I once made butter at home by shaking cream in a jar. Easy enough, but your wrists get knackered.
Yes, jjimm, it’s possible to make cheese at home. Some posters might remember my “cheesemaker” thread.
Simple fresh cheeses require only a few supplies, such as can easily be found at
which link poster Leamas provided, as well. Fresh cheeses include fromage blanc, cottage cheese, ricottas, cream cheese, etc. Making them is easy and you will need little equipment. Be sure to buy the best quality milk you can find and your homemade fresh cheese will be even better. If you do order from them, try their creme fraiche starter. Yum!
Cheeses which need ripening need a special environment which you can create in an old fridge modified with an inexpensive thermostat and a humidifier. Ripened cheeses are brie, cheddar, camembert, parmesan, swiss, etc. My experience was that cheesemaking was fun, and it was a thrill to create my own camemberts. However, they never tasted like a real French camembert, and this I am sure was because I could not of course use milk from Normandy cows nor totally duplicate a camembert cave. Tasting a professional produced California artisanal camembert only confirmed this, and so I gave up the camembert-making. I plan to instead attempt mozzarella next because it needs no complex ripening, and fresh mozzarella is very popular in the Pug household!
I hope you give it a try and good luck to you.
Where’s Collounsbury?
When I was a kid my class went on a field trip to an organic farm. We milked a goat and saw how they made cheese, and we got to eat some. I don’t remember the details, but it looked fairly easy. Well, except for milking the goat, that takes practice.