Cheese Production

Cheese Production

No two cheese varieties are produced by exactly the same method, but the basic steps are common to them all. They include milk selection, coagulation, curd treatment (cutting, heating, salting, knitting, and pressing), curing, and ripening. The yield from 10 pounds of milk is approximately 1 pound of cheese and 9 pounds of whey. On a smaller scale, that is equivalent to 1 cup (8 ounces) of milk providing about 1 ounce (specifically 0.8 ounce) of cheese.

Milk Selection

The first step in making cheese, and the one that has the greatest influence on its classification, is choosing the appropriate milk. Any mammal’s milk can be made into cheese, but in the United States, pasteurized cow’s milk is the most common source. In Europe and the Middle East, significant amount of cheese is made from either sheep’s or goat’s milk. Other animals whose milk may be used for making cheese include the camel (Iran and Afghanistan), reindeer (Lapland), horse (Mongolia), water buffalo (Philippines, India and Italy), and the yak and zebu (China and Tibet).

The amount of fat found in cheese is determined by the type of milk from which it is made. Whole, reduced fat, or fat-free (nonfat) milk, buttermilk, cream, whey, milk solids-not-fat (MSNF), or any combination of these can serve as the basis for cheese-making. Homogenized milk is usually selected for making soft cheese because homogenization makes the casein proteins coagulate more easily, and the increased surface area of the broken-up fat results in a moister product. Homogenized milk is not used to make hard cheeses, because the same trait that was desirable for softer cheeses creates a brittle texture during the long aging process.