Hill - Kitchen creamery: making yogurt, butter, & cheese at home

To Alan, who eats the experiments.

Copyright 2015 by Louella Trimble Hill.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

ISBN 978-1-4521-3048-4 (epub, mobi)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data : Hill, Louella.
Kitchen creamery : making yogurt, butter, and cheese at home / by Louella Hill ; photographs by Erin Kunkel ; illustrations by Louella Hill.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4521-1162-9 (hc)
1. Cheesemaking. 2. Yogurt. 3. Butter. I. Title.
SF271.H49 2014
637'.3dc23
2014005140

Designed by Alice Chau
Photography by Erin Kunkel
Prop & food styling by Christine Wolheim

Chronicle Books LLC
680 Second Street
San Francisco, California 94107
www.chroniclebooks.com

I am lucky I dont have a rat problem. I think this every time I step into my garage and breathe in the barn-like scent that lingers there. It emanates from all the cheese projects stashed within. More than three dozen wheels sit inside my caves (what I like to call my converted refrigerators), ripening into flavors that maybe Ior anyone in the whole world, for that matterhave never tasted before. This transformation of milk to fragrant wheel takes place within the comfort of my own home, which sits at the end of a quiet alley in San Francisco.

Although many people assume so, I am not actually a farm girl; I just play the part well. I run a business called The Milk Maid, where I teach a range of cheese-making classes. I have also worked at enough dairies to speak knowledgeably about anything from cow breeds to ripening cultures. But the truth is, I come from the Sonoran Desert in Arizonaa place where even the cactuses look parched and not much cheese is made.

My connection to both farming and cheesemaking began when I was taking a break from college to explore where food comes from. I was working at an agriturismo in Tuscany (which Id found by word of mouth) when the neighboring farmserendipitously a sheep dairyneeded an extra set of hands. The moment I walked into that milking parlor and saw the muddy backsides of those Sarda sheep, I knew it was destiny.

While me turning farmer may have been a tad surprising to my family, the fact that I work with my hands every day is not. I come from a family of artists, and I learned early on that the fun of creating is in the process. My father is an artist blacksmith, and my grandfather is a watercolor artist. My grandmother was a professional welder (not the most common job for a female in the 1960s), and her mothermy great-grandmother, and namesakewas a fashion designer in the 1940s. She, like me, was a mother who needed to make a living but also felt driven to do so creatively.

To add to this genetic predisposition toward making things, I was also exposed to a multitude of environmental cues. I grew up not only among forges and trip hammers, but surrounded, thanks to my artist mother, by more yarn, knitting machines, fabric, patterns, and craft books than youd find in most full-blown crafts stores. Im not sure it would even be possible for me to have an empty garage or a blank tabletop. Acquiring tools, dreaming big, sketching ideas, making messes, and reconfiguring is what Ive been doing all along. Im so inspired by my relatives and friends who make quilts, knives, doors, sweaters, pottery, and more. They know.

I like to make the things I need instead of buying themsometimes to a fault. My husband, Alan, will happily regale you with the story of the time I starting making toothpaste for our household. I had the bright idea to use pulverized school chalk for the calcium carbonate, and the even better idea of grinding up whole cloves to make it taste and smell good. One ridiculous family tooth-brushing later, the mirror showed us with large black chunks between every tooth.

Needless to say, Im not making toothpaste anymore. Ive matured a bit in my do-it-myself style, letting go of the idea that I have to make everything, and instead focusing on making something I love to both make and consume.

The other day, while a vat of milk was ripening on the stove, I scattered photos for pasting into an album all over the kitchen table. I grouped them into piles: childhood, college, after college. While sorting, I thought about so many transitions, endings, and beginnings. Then I took all those eras, those layers of influence, and arranged them into one book.

I returned to my warm vat of milk. I cut the curd vertically, then horizontally. I started to stir. The curds were soft and large. I stirred and stirred.

An hour later, my whole hand softened with butterfat and my mind soaked with memories, it dawned on me how the wheel of cheese Id just made was also an album: a collection of facts, captured clues and information about where the milk came from, how it was transformed into cheese, and finally, how the cheese would move into old age. Inside that wheel would one day be a season of thunderstorms, once-bloomed flowers, a smoky fall, and an ancient basement (or, in my case, a converted fridge tucked into an urban garage). These details combine, concentrate, and finally break down into something both concentrated and complex. Cheese is a time capsule you can taste.

If youre opening this book, its very likely because youre fond of cheeseand probably also because you like to know how things are made. Excellent! These are good characteristics for a home cheesemaker to have. Although there are thousands of beautiful cheeses out there in the world already, theres still plenty of room and reasons for you to make your own.

To Keep Food Simple

By making your own cheeses and dairy products, you ensure the pureness of your food. No additives, no bleaching, and no stabilizers if you dont want them.

To Support Local Dairies

By making your own cheese, you choose where the milk comes from. This means you can actively support animals who spend time outside on grass. You can be part of preserving a stretch of open space you may drive past each day.

To Participate in the Food System

Youve heard the arguments and theyre true: Our current food system is oversized, centralized, mechanized, and deeply infused with chemicals and petroleum. To have a future, we have to enter the kitchen and work the farm. Our hands have to get busy. Our aprons have to get soiled.

To Generate Zero Waste

If you haul milk home in a reusable container, turn the milk into cheese, and toss the whey to your backyard chickens, youll have a wheel of zero waste cheese. No Styrofoam shipping containers. No cardboard boxes. No plastic shrink-wrap. Just landfill-free goodness.

To Save Money

Depending on your milk source and what type of cheese you make, you may find your pocketbook fattening as your cheese cave swells. Cultured dairy products (such as yogurt and kefir), which have 100 percent yield, can be made for less than a quarter of the price of store-bought versions.

To Give Unique Gifts

Who else celebrates their twentieth wedding anniversary with a twenty-month-old wheel of homemade bandage-wrapped cheddar? Who else gives moldy heart-shaped presents to friends on Valentines Day?