Yep, it means: White Cheese

This weekend I upped my home cheese making by attempting Fromage Blanc.  It is a mild, spreadable cheese (sort of like cream cheese or the herbed Alouette you can get at the store).  I was pretty excited to try my hand at something other than mozzarella or ricotta.

I started by ordering the formage blanc starter from the New England Cheese Making Supply Company.  I read the recipe – which consists of four steps – a number of times.  And yet, as I set out to start my cheese I realized that, although I saw the part about it draining for 6-12 hours, I missed the part about it setting up for 12 hours prior to that!  I looked at the clock and decided that this was a sacrifice I would make for cheese - I would stay up until 12:35AM so that I could drain and hang that fromage blanc, and then get up at 7AM to check it.  Done and done.

And, that's exactly what I did.  I made the cheese with organic whole milk from Lund's.  It turned out beautifully.  I only drained it for about 6 1/2 hours because I wanted the consistency to remain soft and spreadable.  After removing it from the butter muslin it had hung in, I folded in a tablespoon of Herbes de Provence, put it in an airtight container and moved it to my fridge.  I'm going to let it sit for a day or two, so the herbs really flavor the cheese, then it will be cheese meet cracker!  I cannot wait.

Too yummy!  So, this weekend, I stayed up really late and made white cheese with french herbs.  So very fancy...

I made cheese

Moving just isn't enough to occupy my time, apparently.  While reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, an incredible read about eating local, my lifelong desire to make cheese was once again pulled to the surface.  So, I immediately jumped onto cheesemaking.com and purchased the 30 minute Mozzarella kit.  Guess what?  It really only takes 30 minutes!

The cheese was delicious.  In 30 minutes I made about 1 pound of fresh Mozzarella.  While it cooled a bit, I rolled out pizza dough from a Pillsbury package and popped it in the oven for a 5 minute pre-bake. Then I sliced and sautéed onions, green peppers, zucchini and garlic.  I threw in some diced, canned tomatoes and fennel, then spread the whole mixture onto the crust.  Topped it off with some pepperonis and black olives (for Urban) and a bunch of fresh Mozzarella.  10 minutes later we sat down to a pizza dinner that everyone demolished.  It was so good!

I love making cheese.  In between boxing up our office and cleaning the 1/2 story this week, I'll definitely be trying my hand at ricotta.