I know milk is somehow involved, as it’s a dairy product, but beyond that, nada.
I more or less am familiar with how butter comes to be, but a huge gaping hole where it comes to cheese.
For all I know magic gnomes are responsible.
Short answer: cheese is curdled milk.
Enzymes. The theory is that cheese was invented when nomadic people tried to transport stored milk using the stomach of a calf, and the enzymes (rennet) inside curdled it into chunks. Add salt and it lasts longer.
These days you can get rennet from the traditional source, or produced by bacteria.
Home cheesemakers can also use curdling agents like (IIRC) lemon juice or vinegar for simpler curd cheeses.
Once curdled, of course, the cheese is processed, usually by squeezing out the liquid (whey) and leaving the solid (curds). The curds are then aged.
Broadly, curds alone are cottage cheese (and other similar cheeses). After being pressed into a solid block, a short aging gives American cheese and longer aging gives cheddar (the flavor of cheddar depends on how long it ages; the longer, the sharper.
Other cheeses are made from bacterial cultures that are added to the cheese before it’s set aside to age. These result in different flavors and textures. Hard cheeses are usually aged longer than soft ones.
Try making your own homemade farmer’s cheese. Take some milk, heat it up slightly and slowly add vinegar or lemon juice until it curdles. Strain the whole thing through cheese cloth or a clean white tee shirt and let it drain overnight. If you would like it to be firmer, you can then weigh it down to further squeeze out the moisture. Soaking the cheese cloth with vinegar will add a sharper flavor. When I lived in a cheeseless place, I would make this quite frequently and mix it with chopped garlic and fresh herbs for a goat-cheese like effect. The lefterover drippings (whey), are very nutritious and can used in cooking to add flavor and nutritious to sauces.
The cheese above is uncultured, meaning it does not include bacteria. Most of the cheeses that we eat are cultured. Rather than using acid to induce curling (which happens at a heat too high for bacteria to thrive in) they use an enzyme derived from stomach lining to cause the milk to curdle. Then the cheese is processed with bacteria (either wild, or from some kind of starter) that will determine it’s characteristics. The bacteria will partially digest the cheese and create flavorful by-products. After the cheese if formed, there are a number of processes- from introducing molds to salting to pressing- that are used to create various types of cheese.
Then you have all the wonderfulness that happens when bacteria gets into the cheese and forms blue streaks and channels. Or bubbles, which gives us the typical Swiss cheese.
Watch the History Channel and look for “Modern Marvels.” They’ve done several episodes on cheese.
Or, you can just watch it on Youtube.
You should just try making your own at home. Here’s a great resource. It’s fun. (All the basics are pretty well covered above.)
When a mommy cheese and a daddy cheese really love each other…
I used to make mozzarella at home. All you really need is some rennet…although it may help to have food grade gloves when stretching the hot cheese. But really, really fresh mozzarella? Yum!
Even cheddar has a culture of some sort, but you’re right in broad terms.
Here are the rough steps (not all cheeses go in this exact order):
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Culture milk
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Separate curds from whey
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Press curds to remove more moisture
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Somewhere in there, add salt.
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Add mold (for some cheeses)
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Age.
The flavor depends on the processing (sometimes it’s heated), the salt level (added, soaked in brine, etc…), the culture (different bacteria and molds taste different), the aging time, the aging conditions, etc…
In real broad terms, 1 gallon of milk makes about 1 lb of finished cheese (obviously dependent on aging and residual moisture).
Ignore the previous clip suggestions - they’ll just bore you with completely superfluous factual information.
What you need is THIS - Mitchell and Webb - cheese discussion.
This is what I was going to say. 20-minute Mozzarella is amazing.
My sister teaches cheese-making. She says the classes are always full. It sounds like a fun thing to learn – check to see of there are any classes where you live!
I’ve made homemade ricotta and paneer with stuff that you find in any grocery store (Whole milk, lemon juice, and salt in both cases, IIRC). It’s fun and yields delicious results.
I also bought a mozzerella kit that included rennet and citric acid. It didn’t come out great, but I can see myself playing around with homemade cheese more in the future.
Health food stores will have those ingredients, no need to buy a kit.
Vitamin C in bulk powder form, and rennet in tablets or liquid form- probably vegetarian rennet as well as the normal cow-based kind.
How it’s made: How it's Made: Cheese - YouTube
Why is Richard Simmons making cheese?
Is that his thing now?