If you’ve ever wondered how THIS becomes THIS, well, so have we.
So we asked Richard Sutton and Christy Caye of St. James Cheese Company in New Orleans
to give us the skinny.
Cheesemaking is a process of using microbes, enzymes, and salt to make nutritious but perishable
milk last longer.
“People started making cheese, humans started making cheese,
whenever we did that, a long time ago.
They did that because they were looking for a way to preserve the nutritional value of
milk, over the period of time when they otherwise weren’t able to get fresh milk.”
“Milk looks like a very simple white substance, but it’s actually very complex,
and a glass of milk basically has a handful of things.
There’s water, there’s a bunch of protein floating around in there, there’s fat, there’s
vitamins and minerals, and and there’s sugar, also known as lactose.”
The trick to turning milk into cheese is removing the water while keeping most of that other
good stuff, since less moisture makes it harder for spoilage microbes to grow.
And adding good bacteria and fungi makes it harder for bad ones to get a leg up.
So cheesemakers start by adding those good microbes to the milk.
Lactic acid bacteria lower the pH of the milk, which helps it to solidify, and also helps
the cheesemaker control what other microbes will grow.
“Cheesemaking is a little bit like mimicking the way that we would digest milk, you know.
So if we drink milk or if you take milk from your mother... there are enzymes in your stomach
that actually breaks that fluid down"
Then the cheesemaker adds rennet
Rennet is an enzyme that traditionally comes from the stomach of a cow, but vegetarian
versions can be made from plants or microbes.
Regardless of the source, rennet starts breaking down the milk proteins, which will make it
possible to separate them from the water.
The main protein in milk is called casein, and the main target of rennet is a version
called kappa casein.
Casein exists in these globules with kappa casein on the surface.
Kappa casein has these very hydrophilic segments that keep the protein globule suspended in
water.
Rennet chops those right off.
The casein globules lose their affinity for water, and start to stick to each other instead,
and the milk proteins start to clump together.
Most of the fat, vitamins, and minerals stay with the protein.
That group of solids forms curds.
Most of the sugar drains away with the water, which is called whey.
After the rennet does its work, there are a series of steps to getting rid of the whey,
bringing the moisture content down from about 85% in milk to between 30-60% in cheese, depending
on whether you're looking at a nice, soft Brie or a really hard Gouda or something.
“So the more water you take out the milk, the harder cheese you’re going to get but
also the longer the cheese will last, typically, and the less kind of microbial activity can
go on there.
So basically when you make cheese you’re taking water out of milk.”
But plain curds aren’t all that tasty.
Aging the cheese is a crucial step to making all the delicious different kinds we know
and love.
Why?
More microbes.
Mostly molds, plus some yeast and bacteria, will grow inside the cheese or on the rind.
“In regards to desirable bacteria and mold and yeast and stuff like that, cheesemakers
add those in a very controlled way in which they know exactly what they’re getting into.
Some are added in the milk during cheesemaking, some are rubbed on the outside of the cheese
after it becomes a wheel, some cheeses are washed in a liquid that has bacteria in it
or other things.”
“Cheese is all about micro organisms and bacteria and molds and fungus is and all kinds
of cool things.
It’s alive.
I mean, cheese is absolutely totally alive.”
Aging gives those microbes time to grow and develop their funky flavors.
And it’s all about creating an environment where the right microbes will thrive and create
the perfect cheese.
Finally, we wanted to know: If milk is white, why is cheese yellow?
Apparently, there are a couple of reasons.
"So when cows are kept on grass typically, the milk will acquire a more yellow quality
because they are unable to digest the beta carotene in the grass.
And you wind up with a golden hue.
That’s a good thing.
We like cows that the grass, because it makes tasty milk, and it makes tasty cheese.”
Cheese can take on a natural, buttery yellow hue from beta carotene, an orange pigment
and relative of vitamin A. However, all those protein clusters scatter light and make milk
look white -- the beta carotene is hidden.
Beta carotene is soluble in fat, so during the cheese making process, it stays with the
solids, becoming more concentrated and more visible to the eye.
But consumers started associating that color with healthier cows and better milk, so cheese
manufacturers started punching it up by adding a natural coloring agent called annatto.
Annatto is derived from the tropical achiote tree, and can be used as a mild spice -- but
cheesemakers are more interested in its vivid color.
The fluorescent orange color of grocery store cheddar is an artifact of history -- not an
integral part of the cheese.
“But it has been hypothesized by some that it might’ve been the fact the cheesemakers
did that because they knew that cows that were fed and grass produce a better quality
milk.
So they say well, in the winter time, maybe I’m just going to put a little something
in there because it’s going to look better at the market when I bring it to the market
and sell it.”
“They would have milk that was lovely foraged milk or whatever, because it was eating grass,
and when you skim the butter fat off the top, it removes a lot of that beta-carotene in
the butter so it looks lighter colored, and then basically they would add color to make
it look like it was a full fat cheese…
Anything that’s, any cheese that’s oranger than like a buttercup yellow, or like a nice
rich butter yellow, typically they’re adding annatto to the cheese.”
So that’s how milk becomes cheese, in all its delicious, delicious glory.
“We’ve been eating cheese on this planet for a couple thousand years, and we’ll probably
do it for another couple thousand years, I hope.”
Thanks for watching.
Huge thanks again to Richard and Christy from St. James Cheese Company, which you should
visit if you’re ever in New Orleans.
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