History in the Making Part One

History in the making:

A celebration of Artisan cheeses in Ontario

With a step by step cheese-making how-to and 

fresh cheese recipes to try at home

photo: michelle L. 2012

Cheese. The product of milk, bugs, care and time. A very versatile food, you can bake it, melt it, batter and deep fry it, turn it into soups, eat it out of hand for a wine and cheese snack and freeze most for later use or buying in bulk. Some hate it, some love it and others don’t care one way or the other. Some hunt down the oldest, stinkiest of cheddars while others stick to soft and gooey bloom-rind cheeses. Some consider themselves gourmands of the cheese platter while other people’s taste buds are more familiar with Cheez-Whiz, processed slices and the mozzarella on pizza. 

A bit of Backstory
History and archaeology tell us that cultures around the world have been making, eating and selling cheese for approximately 8,000 years, after the domestication of ruminants became important. Interestingly, sheep were milked 3,000 years before cows and today is one of the least easy-to-find cheeses. Evidence of cheese making that has been found in Iraq, Africa and Egypt include art depicting milk animals, cheese making pots and even an actual piece of cheese. There is later historical evidence of the fact that Greek and Roman empires valued cheese so much that it was used as currency in the trader’s markets. Written records such as Homer’s Odyssey(1184 BC), tell about an early form of cheese (possibly feta) and the Roman Pliny the Elder wrote about the making and uses of cheese.

In the middle ages, Christianity, through the monks and nuns, helped spread agricultural knowledge and techniques across Europe including those of wine, cheese and beer making. There are many types of cheese produced today that were originally made in monasteries such as Wenslydale, which is from the Rievaulx Abbey in Yorkshire England. The small feudal states of the middle ages contributed to the development of regional specialties of cheese as they were as isolated as monasteries, allowing people to acquire vast skills in self-sufficiency. These skills, such as cheese making, were then passed on to future generations.

In the 1600’s, cheese making came to North America via Britain and France giving us hard and soft cheeses, respectively. Here in Canada, the first mention of cattle is around 1610 when Samuel de Champlain introduced a herd to Quebec. By 1630 there is evidence that ripened cheeses were firmly established in the French Canadian lifestyle. According to dairygoodness.ca “In 1630, records suggest, Acadians supplied cheese to the returning French fleet”.

The first Canadian cheese factory was opened by an American(some things never change), Harvey Farrington, in 1864 in Norwich, Ontario and by the confederation year of 1867, there were 200 established cheese factories in Ontario. Over the years as immigrants came to this country from other areas of the agricultural world, our cheese varieties have grown, making available a wide range of taste experiences for the cheese lover. This large and beautiful country has immense areas of agricultural land and people (if left with some semblance of self-government) could essentially buy land, a few milk animals and begin making cheese for themselves and to sell at the market.

Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in the early twentieth century, large factories have dominated and changed the lives of ordinary people. Factories meant jobs; jobs meant influx of job seekers; such large numbers led to the development of larger cities. Cities require amounts of food that can empty the local supply sources leading to bigger and bigger farms, mostly owned by corporations, taking over small time and subsistent farm land and operations. Cheese making in factories has led to a loss of varieties of cheeses that change flavour with the seasons and has left us with bland, uniform cheeses that are the direct result of putting profitability over quality.

Milk Types 

You’ve probably heard the expression that milk is nature’s most perfect food as it has been known for quite some time that it supplies almost every nutrient and vitamin the body needs. Milk is made up of four main components, among others, that are essential to making cheese: fat, casein, lactose and whey protein.

Fat is necessary for the proper texture, flavour and aroma of a particular cheese for example Cambembert.

Casein is the major protein in milk and has elastic properties that can shrink or expand as illustrated by stringy mozzarella cheese on a pizza.

Whey protein is only a small part of milk and it holds more moisture than casein and is used, traditionally, for the making of ricotta.

Lactose is a carbohydrate (milk sugar) that is necessary for the right bacteria to feed on to grow and thrive, beginning the fermentation process.

Types

Most milk is derived from three sources-cow, sheep and goat. While all milk contains the components mentioned above, each breed has it’s own characteristics that affect the cheese which is made from it.

Jersey cow--artisan cheese makers swear by this little lady and her sisters as their milk is high in butterfat.
photo credit: michelle L. 2012

Cow’s milk cheeses are creamy, depending on the level of cream found in the milk, which has a high moisture content with large fat globules. The most popular breed for cheese making is the Jersey cow yielding a fat content of 5.4%. To compare, the popular drinking milk from a Holstein cow is usually 3.5-4% fat content.

Goat’s milk has smaller fat globules than cow’s milk and is partially homogenized leading to a smoother, softer texture of cheese.

photo credit: michelle L. 2012

Sheep, when compared to cows, gives a considerably lower amount of milk but it contains the same amount of solids. The milk is loaded with oils and butterfat, which makes a very rich and flavourful cheese. It is a cheese that is harder to find than the others not to mention the fact that finding the milk is next to impossible in many areas of North America.

Forms of Milk for Cheese making

Terroir is a term commonly used for the area a cow lives and feeds in, that encompasses what the cow eats-(fresh, wild grasses make more flavourful milk than silage fed, penned cow’s milk)

where the cow eats-(by the ocean means salt deposits on the grasses)

the time of year appropriate to making cheese-(winter is out as most cows are eating silage in cold climates).

Raw Milk
Raw milk is the liquid gold of cheese makers as it holds all the enzymes and microflora that the animal ate when grazing in it’s own terroir which makes a flavourful cheese. There have been many arguments for and against the use of raw milk—usually based upon erroneous information that it is unsafe or rather more unsafe than pasteurized—and I cover the topic in a future article but to sum up, there are risks in both milks and cheeses. Both raw and pasteurized milk has a neutral pH that allows it to be a great host for pathogenic bacteria. Fresh and soft-ripened cheeses made from pasteurized milk have the same potential for problems as cheeses made from raw. In Canada, raw milk cheeses must be aged for over 60 days to kill off the bad bacteria in order to enter the retail market.

Pasteurized

Pasteurization is the name given to the process of heating milk briefly to destroy pathogens that are possibly present in the milk. Before the advent of industrial cheese factories there were hardly any cheeses made from pasteurized milk. Cheese factories made pasteurization a necessity due to the great distances milk had to travel to get to the factories as well as to ensure a standardized taste to the cheese. Where artisanal cheese makers look at the changes in taste as a part of the natural cycle of nature, factory owners require a consistent product. To achieve this, I think, unnecessary consistency, pasteurization was utilized as a way to make sure that every drop of milk the factories use had the same flat taste.

The most popular method of pasteurization used by factories and industrial cheese makers is the high-heat method, High Temperature Short Hold or HTSH for short. Milk is heated to 700 to 720 C (158 to 1620 F) and then quickly cooled to 7-130 C (45 to 550 F ). This is a method that essentially sterilizes the milk so that all bacteria is killed even the good bacteria. It also destroy all enzymes found in milk including the enzyme lactase which helps us digest milk, a fact that has led experts to believe that pasteurization may have a direct link to lactose intolerance. For the cheese maker, this destruction means adding a bacterial strain to the milk and to use calcium chloride which is a salt used to absorb moisture and help with the creation of curds.

Homogenized
Milk that has been homogenized has had it’s fat globules busted down to very small pieces. This causes the cream to stay within the milk, rather than rising to the top. Homogenized milk does not coagulate well into cheese and the curds are softer than if using pasteurized or raw milk. Cheese makers have to combat this by adding additional rennet and calcium chloride.

Characteristics for Classification

Cheese can be broken down into three main characteristics: type of rind, moisture(humidity) and fat content.

Rind

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Bloomy - either sprayed with bacteria after the cheese’s shape has been formed or adding the bacteria directly into the milk.

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Washed - sprayed with bacteria water then washed with a brine every other day. Alternatively, wine or beer can be used instead of the brine solution.

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Artificial-usually wax, ash or food colouring.

Moisture

Fresh cheese – over 60%

Soft – 50% to 60%

Semi-firm – 45% to 50%

Firm – 35% to 45%

Hard – less than 35%

Fat Content

This can get a bit confusing depending on how fat in cheese is measured where you live. Generally speaking, the more fat found in the cheese, the creamier it is. Sometimes, when high fat is combined with high moisture, it means milder flavour as with cottage cheese.

Rennet and Acids

There are two ways to achieve the coagulation necessary to turn milk solids into cheese: acid or rennet. 

Rennet
Rennet is an enzyme either from an animal source or plant source, that causes the curds to form. To be effective, the rennet has to be paired with milk that has the right acidity.

Acids
 Acidity in cheese plays a major role in the taste characteristics of the cheese as well as controls the moisture in the curds. The higher the acid level; the softer the cheese and the sharper the flavour. Starter cultures are the usual way to add acid to milk but acid in the form of vinegar or lemon juice can be used as well. 

Starter Cultures
A starter culture is a lactic acid bacteria that increases the amount of acidity found in the milk. There are two types of starters that are used: mesophilic and thermophilic cultures. 

Mesophilic cultures, used for Cheddar, Gouda and other hard cheeses, are a moderate temperature bacteria, usually no higher than 300 C (102 F). 
Thermophilic cultures , used for Parmesan, Swiss-type cheese, are for higher temperatures up to 550 C (132 F).

Moulds and External Bacteria

As moulds are a type of fungi requiring a host for survival, cheese offers the perfect ‘food’ for mould, with its high-protein and high-moisture content. The mould is applied to the surface of the cheese and slowly grows to penetrate to the centre of the cheese. The mould eats the lactic acid which softens the fats and proteins. The following are the three main moulds that are used by home cheese makers:

Penicillium candidum
This is the mould used for cheeses such as Brie or Camambert. The soft white coating helps the ripening process. Even though we think of the white mould when we think of Brie, it is actually not the original and traditional colour. Because it was air ripened rather than through the use of P. candidum, the colour of the bloomy rind changed to colours such as blue and brown. The use of P. candidum to make a white bloomy rind came about for consistency reasons in cheese factories, just like with pasteurization.

Geotrichum candidum
This mould is used along with P. candidum or Brevibacterium linens. It will help the rind to stay on the cheese without slipping on soft-ripened cheese and help its flavour profile. With washed rind cheeses, this mould will help the growth of B. linens.

Penicillium roqueforti
This is a very well known mould that is responsible for the wonderfully rich flavour of blue cheese.

External Bacteria: Brevibacterium linens

This is a natural occurring bacteria that is applied to the outside surface of the cheese which will help with the ripening process. These cheeses must be washed with a brine solution(or beer, wine or spirits) to make sure the bacteria reaches evenly all over the surface.

Vegetable Ash
Vegetable ash is traditionally used for goat’s milk cheeses and is a particular favourite of local cheese makers in France for the helpful environment for moulds to grow.

Salt
Salt has many responsibilities in cheese making not the least of which is as a natural preservative and to slow down the growth of the lactic acid. It also dries out the cheese intensifying the flavour and refining the texture. As iodized salt kills the starter cultures it is important to use canning salt, kosher salt or cheese salt.

End of Part One

Read Part Two