Feta cheese making!

So along with beer and wine, my dad has decided to branch out into home cheese making as well. During my visit home, we made a huge batch of feta, which we learned was a good place for beginners to start.

First we drove to a local dairy farm and picked up several gallons of raw milk. Unpasteurized stuff that still has all the living enzymes in it is better for cheese making, you see. It was a pretty place, with lots of pretty cows, some of which you could see through the window of the milk store.

 

Did you make our milk?

Interestingly, upon trying a glass of the raw milk, I found it to be much tastier than any processed kind I've ever had. I've never liked the taste of the stuff straight, but I enjoyed that glass more than I have any other.

Then we put four gallons into a giant double boiler my dad got at a restaurant supply store-- stainless steel, because you can't use aluminum for cheese making. Milk cooks better if you hit it with indirect heat, such as from steam from a double boiler. We heated the milk to around ninety degrees, then added a series of enzymes and chemicals to make it coagulate into a curd. Feta is typically made with goat's milk, so to make our cow's milk have the tangy flavor characteristic of that kind of cheese, one of the enzymes we added was lipase, found in goat's milk but not naturally in cow's. 

We allowed it to set and solidify into a curd. This we cut with a long knife that reached to the bottom of the pot in a grid pattern. It was really interesting-looking, all wobbly and gelatinous. I shall endeavor to embed a video that shows how it behaved when my dad wiggled the pot. 

Then we broke it all up with a spoon. You can really see how the solids have coagulated and separated from the whey.

Then the curds went into a cheese mold, to be allowed to drain of excess moisture overnight.

The next day, we had dry, firm, crumbly feta cheese, which we could then salt down and pack in olive oil for flavor.

And that is my first attempt at cheese making! The feta is fresh and delicious; I like it much better than any feta I've ever eaten before. I can't eat much of it due to lactose intolerance, but the process is so interesting and fun I don't mind not being able to have much of the result of our labors. We used it and some homemade ricotta we made from the drained-off whey in spanikopita, which came out very delicious. I brought one of the wheels up to Boston with me, so anyone would would like some is welcome to try. Just let me know if you'd like me to put some aside for you!