Home Cheese Making: Recipes for 75 Delicious Cheeses

This seems to be the go-to book for aspiring home cheese makers. In fact, the farms where we bought our goats' milk told me they used the book to make their own cheese, and another cheese-making farm told us they used the book when they started out making cheese.

My husband and I hosted a cheese-making weekend with some friends, and both parties got this book in advance to read over. We made mozzarella, which was quite good, and chevre, which was even better. We also tried the farmhouse cheddar, but I won't know how that came out until the end of the month!

The books is clearly written, but you can't just go to the recipes. It is imperative that you read the introductory chapters first, which go over the ingredients, the equipment, and the general process. If you do that carefully -- and then write notes into the recipe you will use -- then the recipes should work out just fine. But walk through the whole process carefully in your mind at least once, with all the equipment and ingredients front of you, before you try it for real; there are lots of details, and the recipes do not remind you of all of them. For example, you must sterilize and then cool down the water for the rennet, crush the rennet tablets, and let them dissolve for 10-30 minutes before adding it to the milk. I had to write this into the recipes to remind me to do it well in advance. I also noted on the recipe pages the stages at which you are NOT supposed to stir! All these things were in the introductory chapters, but are not repeated in the recipes.

Also, I would add that you should get a really reliable digital thermometer that alerts you when the temperature goes above and below a certain temperature. The hardest part of cheese making, for me, was keeping the curds at a set temperature for 30 minutes! Those cheap, dial meat thermometers you get at the grocery store are just not going to be all you need them to be...philly cream cheese cake recipes

FInally, I love that the book profiles artisanal and farmhouse cheese makers around the country. It is interesting to find out how they got started, details about their farms and operations, and their words of encouragement and advice. I actually contacted one of the profiled cheese makers and asked if we could visit. Graciously, they wrote back and invited us. Visiting their farm and cheese operation was one of the highlights of the trip!

This book worked well for us -- told us what equipment we needed, how to make a cheese press, how to prepare a place to age the cheese, etc. For the absolute beginner, this tells you everything you need to know.

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