Elena R. Santogade - The Beginner’s Guide to Cheese Making: Easy Recipes and Lessons to Make Your Own Handcrafted Cheeses

Copyright 2017 by Elena Santogade

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Photography Melina Hammer, cover; Shutterstock/Letterberry, .

Illustrations Tom Bingham

ISBN: Print 978-1-62315-794-4
eBook 978-1-62315-795-1

This book is dedicated to my original WannabeMonger supporters, for your spirited encouragement even in the absence of any decent cheese.

CHAPTER ONE
IN THE CHEESEMAKING KITCHEN

CHAPTER TWO
GETTING STARTED

CHAPTER THREE
THE TUTORIALS

CHAPTER FOUR
SOFT & SPREADABLE CHEESES

CHAPTER FIVE
BRINED & COOKED CHEESES

CHAPTER SIX
SEMI-HARD, HARD & BLUE CHEESES

CHAPTER SEVEN
DRESS IT UP

CHAPTER EIGHT
NUT SPREADS & SNACKS

CHAPTER NINE
EASY DAIRY FERMENTS

I began making cheese at home as a way to learn more about cheese. Like many who work in the cheese industry, my path to fromage was not in any way linear or part of a grand plan. On paper it looks like destiny realized: I have family roots in Wisconsin; I spent my childhood shopping with my parents at Zabars and Fairway Market, two of Manhattans original cheese meccas. The truth is, it was not that neat and tidy. As a kid I loved Velveeta more than I like to admit, and one of the first things I cooked regularly for myself was a grilled American cheese sandwich. It was not until I moved back to New York after college that I started really noticing cheese. A lonely postgraduate student working in the publishing industry, I quickly realized that the built-in social life of college was not actually a thing in the real world. Then I discovered the camaraderie of the cheese counter. Maybe it began with a simple question or two, or a taste of something new; I was starving for meaningful human interaction, and I found friendship among the cheesemongers. With little else going on, I mapped out all the cheese shops in New York City. I stretched the activity on weekends by walking from shop to shop, instead of taking the incredibly fast and efficient subway, and I tasted a lot of cheese. I had the good fortune to travel every few months for work, and I found myself seeking out the famed cheese shops in Bologna, Copenhagen, London, and Frankfurt. I attribute one of the biggest publishing deals I made during that time not to my negotiating prowess but to the fact that I pleased the potential customer by completely losing my mind over a Danish cheese cart at lunch.

After a few years of calling cheese my primary hobby, I was in deep. The more I sought out about cheese, the more I unlocked previously unknown-to-me facets of history, geography, biology, and myself. I knew I wanted to get more into it, but I was not the type to leave the city and thrive on a farm somewhere or ditch my more traditional job title for monger just yet. I wanted to do something more than taste and read about cheese, and there were no cows in New York CityI checked. There was milk, however.