I have no childhood memories of eating homemade bread. It’s not that my Mother dislikes cooking, as she often shares with me a new recipe she is trying, I think she just had her hands full raising four children while working as a Registered Nurse. No memories of my Grandmother making bread either, however, her fresh pan-fried Rainbow Trout— she and my Grandfather caught in a local stream— I remember well, along with raspberries from her garden and fresh spring rhubarb, with which she always supplied a small dipping bowl full of granulated sugar. Yum! What an amazing concept for a young boy; dip that sour stem into enough sugar—and I mean load it up—and it actually tastes good. So the question becomes; when did bread making fall out of favor, or was I merely brought up in a family with limited culinary interest?
I bring up bread since it is far more likely that the average person will have an experience with bread making in the family kitchen than a memory of cheese making at home. Unfortunately, both of these processes of fermentation have all but disappeared from the home kitchen of the 21st century.
With
over 27 years of vast experiences in the culinary field, including
culinary school (we did make bread), I was never introduced to the art
of making cheese. Shocking, I know. Cheese is this wonderfully diverse
food product with so many unique and varying characteristics and to me
it was this big mystery. Sure, I understood the basics; it’s made from
various animal milks with the addition of bacteria, curds are
involved—my home state of Minnesota and its neighbor Wisconsin were
known for them—and then comes the aging. I was curious about the
process involved and what causes the white mold on the outside of a
Camembert, the holes in a wheel of Swiss cheese or the
dense-crystallized texture of an aged Parmigiano Reggiano.
I dusted off my bookshelf and came up with a paperback book I acquired long ago at a used book store titled “Cheesemaking Made Easy” by Ricki Carroll
and I read it cover to cover. Now, how do I begin? I decided to call in
the local expert. I had met Caitlin Hunter (award-winning artisan
cheese maker from Appleton Creamery)
when I was working on my first cookbook and I use her goat cheeses
extensively at the Inn. When my mother-in-law visits in the summer, she
won’t leave the state without a few jars of Caitlin’s goat cheese
packed in olive oil with basil, garlic and pine nuts. It just so
happened that Caitlin was holding a workshop on cheese making a few
weeks later and I received the education I had longed for. What a
wonderful experience and the “mystery” of turning milk into cheese was
gone.
My
first instinct in a situation like this is to go out and buy all the
equipment needed for this new passion in my life, just ask my wife. So
I cleared out a room in my basement and created a “cheese room and
cellar.” A few weeks and several hundreds of dollars later I acquired
some fresh cow’s milk and made my first cheese at home; a five pound
wheel of Gouda. I followed the instructions that Ricki Carroll outlined
in her book; ripened the milk with bacterial culture, added the rennet,
cut, cooked and drained the curd, molded, pressed and soaked the cheese
in a brine, dried it, waxed it and finally put it away to age.
The
investment in equipment was large (I went a little overboard) and fresh
local milk is not inexpensive unless you happen to have a goat or flock
of sheep in the backyard, but the experience, as the Master Card
commercial states, was priceless. It was the most expensive cheese I
have ever eaten, but it was made with my own hands, with local organic
milk and it tasted pretty good. I went on to make blue cheese,
Emmenthaler and most recently I made a Swiss cheese with local Sheep’s
milk. I recruited my kitchen staff to assist in my latest cheese
experience and they seem to show a genuine interest in the process, so
it looks like we will be making our own cheeses on a regular basis at
the Inn. Who knows, maybe they will take the art of cheese making home
to their kitchens and families and inspire a new generation of
home-cheese makers.
Michael Salmon is the chef and owner of The Hartstone Inn .
