How to make cream cheese

Want to know how to make cream cheese? Well here you go/ Danger Duke had been kind enough to send me some acorn flour he had made, I stuck in the freezer and it’s been sitting there talking to me every time I open the freezer door, begging to be used, so I decided to make some cheesecake with it, first though I needed to make the cream cheese to make it

So I grabbed a gallon of raw milk, rennet and mesophillic starter

I poured the milk into a double boiler and inserted my candy thermometer, you only want to heat the milk to 80 degrees, well the candy thermometer starts at 100, so you kind of want to eye ball it

once you have the temp you want, sprinkle the starter on the milk and let it set for 3 minutes, then gently stir the milk

put 2 drops of rennet into 2 tablespoons of luke warm water

and pour it into the milk

you do not want to stir, use a up and down motion with a spoon to incorporate the rennet

put a lid on it and let it set at room temp for about 16 hours

I checked it the next morning and it had firmed pretty good, need to let it set another 4 or 5 hours

so I checked it a couple hours later and was happy with it, it’s almost like yogurt

so I set my straining cloth into a pot

and scooped the curds into it

and tied the corners of the cloth around a metal spoon

and set it across a 5 gallon bucket and placed it in the pantry, time to wait another 12 hours

so the drain cloth was a little to tight weaved to gravity drain the cheese, it works good for pressing, but not for this method, so I picked up some flour bag towels, you really can’t use cheese cloth, because the cheese is so fluid it can drain right through, butter cloth would be acceptable though, so anywho, I lined a a pan with flout cloth

and untied the drain bag, it smells awesome

and moved it over to the flour sack

and tied it back up and stuck it into the pantry

I made some more bagels in anticipation

The next morning I got up and pulled the cream cheese out of the pantry

I mixed in a little bit of salt and stuck it in a container to go in the fridge to firm up

of course I had to have some on a bagel

this is a very raw cream cheese, so if you try and make this, do not think it will come right out of the bag tasting like philadelphia cream cheese

Click HERE to see the thread in the forums