David Asher - The Art of Natural Cheesemaking: Using Traditional, Non-Industrial Methods and Raw Ingredients to Make the World’s Best Cheeses

Praise for
The Art of Natural Cheesemaking

Finally, the cheesemaking book Ive always wanted to read! For anyone interested in traditional, low-tech cheesemaking, The Art of Natural Cheesemaking will be an empowering tool.

Sandor Ellix Katz , author of
The Art of Fermentation , from the Foreword

If you want to know every possible detail about cheesemaking the natural way and on a small scale in your home, The Art of Natural Cheesemaking is the book for youeven if youd just like to dabble in your kitchen. There are chapters on kefir, yogurt cheeses, and paneer for beginners and, for advanced students, detailed instructions on how to make rennet from the fourth stomach of a calf. Everything is beautifully illustrated and carefully explained. This book will entice many to join the ranks of those engaged in the art of transforming milk to delicious end products. As the old saying goes, Blessed are the cheesemakers. Many more will become blessed thanks to David Ashers work.

Sally Fallon Morell , president, the Weston A. Price
Foundation, and cheesemaker, P. A. Bowen Farmstead

The Art of Natural Cheesemaking is a breakthrough book. The interest among eaters to explore this next stage in do-it-yourself living in the 21st century has finally reached dairy. Whats great about Ashers book is that it is practical and zeroes in on cheese products one may actually make successfully at home. It is unlikely that DIY cheesemaking will put any cheesemonger or cheese producer out of business. Quite the opposite. In fact, the more we remove the mystery to manufacturing even the simplest of cheeses at home, the more we will come to admire the craftsmanship that dairy farmers and artisanal cheesemakers bring to their work, to make life better and tastier for the rest of us.

Richard McCarthy , executive director, Slow Food USA

David Ashers book is brave and important, teaching us to tend to what matters by helping us understand process before recipes. This book expands the boundaries of sustainability, deepening the power of independent autonomy and local flavor, making our world more delicious.

Shannon Hayes , author of Radical Homemakers:
Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture

Copyright 2015 by David Asher Rotsztain.

All rights reserved.

Unless otherwise noted, all photographs copyright 2015 by Kelly Brown.

No part of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form
by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.

Project Manager: Patricia Stone

Project Editor: Benjamin Watson

Copy Editor: Laura Jorstad

Proofreader: Eileen Clawson

Indexer: Shana Milkie

Designer: Melissa Jacobson

Printed in the United States of America.

First printing June, 2015.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 15 16 17 18

Our Commitment to Green Publishing

Chelsea Green sees publishing as a tool for cultural change and ecological stewardship. We strive to align our book manufacturing practices with our editorial mission and to reduce the impact of our business enterprise in the environment. We print our books and catalogs on chlorine-free recycled paper, using vegetable-based inks whenever possible. This book may cost slightly more because it was printed on paper that contains recycled fiber, and we hope youll agree that its worth it. Chelsea Green is a member of the Green Press Initiative ( www.greenpressinitiative.org ), a nonprofit coalition of publishers, manufacturers, and authors working to protect the worlds endangered forests and conserve natural resources. The Art of Natural Cheesemaking was printed on paper supplied by QuadGraphics that contains at least 10% postconsumer recycled fiber.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Asher, David, 1980

The art of natural cheesemaking : using traditional, non-industrial methods and raw ingredients to make the worlds best cheeses / David Asher.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-60358-578-1 (pbk.) ISBN 978-1-60358-579-8 (ebook)

1. Cheesemaking. I. Title.

SF271.A843 2015

637.3dc23

2015006122

Chelsea Green Publishing

85 North Main Street, Suite 120

White River Junction, VT 05001

(802) 295-6300

www.chelseagreen.com

All good cheese is wild and free.

Contents

Foreword

Finally, the cheesemaking book Ive always wanted to read!

Cheese is such an important realm of fermentation and food preservation. It transforms one of the most perishable of food products, milk, into a food that can be stored and transported, even without refrigeration. And its brilliant diversity of flavors, smells, textures, and appearances exemplifies the creativity and adaptability of human culture. One crucial factor in this diversity is microbial biodiversity, in that much of the variation in cheeses is due to different types of organisms and microbial communities, as selected by aging environment and surface treatment.

Most of the contemporary practice of cheesemaking, along with most of the contemporary literature, relies on the use of laboratory-derived pure- strain cultures, which are a relatively new phenomenon, possible for barely 150 years and widely used for a much shorter time. These pure-strain cultures represent a radical departure from the entire earlier history of cheesemaking, in which all cheeses relied upon the rich microbial communities indigenous to milk, often accentuated by the practice of backslopping, which means incorporating a little of the previous batch into each subsequent one.

While cheese is such an extraordinary manifestation of biodiversity, the logic behind most contemporary cheesemaking is that of monoculture, using a single microbial strain (or possibly two or three) in lieu of the broader microbial communities used traditionally. This is as true for most farmstead, home, or hobby cheesemakers as it is for the mass producers.

The Art of Natural Cheesemaking reclaims this earlier cheesemaking legacy, with great practical information on how to work with raw milk, along with widely available kefir grains or yogurt, to encourage different types of microbial communities for different types of cheeses. David Asher poses a challenge to conventional cheesemaking, as he puts it, and offers a bold vision of cheesemaking as wild fermentation, by revisiting older methods that rely upon the biodiversity of raw milk. We need to stop thinking of the cultural regimes in cheese as individual strains of bacteria or fungi, he declares. It is the reductionist industrial approach to cheesemaking that has singled out what are believed to be the important players in an evolving cheese; the minor players have been cast aside and forgotten. Yet its the combination of the important players and their supporting microorganisms that make for a healthy cheesemaking. For it is not an individual species that makes a cheese, but a community of microorganisms...

The Art of Natural Cheesemaking starts with this impassioned and compelling manifesto; then the rest of the book is devoted to methods, in sufficient detail to guide the reader through the process. I have spent time with David, as both teacher and student. I have greatly enjoyed his delicious cheeses, and Ive had success using those of his methods that I have tried. He provides clear and methodical instructions, along with great illustrative photographs, to guide you through making an incredible array of cheeses in your home kitchen. And he does so relying entirely upon microbial communities indigenous to the milk, or those of yogurt or kefir. He offers simple techniques, emphasizing improvisation with whats easily available rather than buying specialized gadgetry.