I guess this might not be the right place for this post, but I figure somebody will move it if it is not.
I started cheese making from a book called Making Artisan Cheese by Tim Smith. It did not have a lot of directions in it, just recipes. I didn’t even gather that you couldn’t cook it on the stove.
Then I bought Home Cheese Making by Rikki Carroll. It had better instructions and I really liked it. Rikki had more recipes in her book, but if the same recipe was in both books, it was the same. I thought it was odd that both books were almost identical.
Last, I bought a book called 200 Easy Homemade Cheese Recipes by Debra Amrein-Boyes. It has even more instructions in it, discussed the differences in pressing with different molds and figuring psi and area of the mold and stuff. I like it also. This book gives pressing by light weight, medium weight, and firm weight, and gives a chart in the beginning of the book with a psi range for each. Cheddar cheese has a firm pressing weight of 20 to 45 psi, which to me is the same kind of information that Peter Dixon has on his site. I have decided that if I put a decimal point in there, 2.0 to 4.5, I can use this information and figure out pressing weights. Otherwise it is just way too heavy.
The recipes in the last book I bought are different from the other two books. I find that to be rather interesting. The cheddaring process is different in the traditional cheddar, and when I got through with it and put the cheese in the press, it was moister than when I made Rikki’s recipe.
I’m hoping that it knits properly this time. I have yet to succeed at knitting a traditional cheddar, but at least I think I know why I have failed in the past, so this time I won’t fail again. I hope.
