Cheese the next day

Today I took apart my make shift press and pulled my cheddar cheese out of the mold.  I then unwrapped it from the cheese cloth, salted it and set it on a wooden board to "dry" with a clean towel over it.  I will turn it over regularly for the next 2-4 days.  Once it is "dry" I will coat it with wax and let it sit (age) for 30-60 days. I got 11.2 oz (317grams) of cheese out of 4 litres of milk.

I did use Raw milk (milk straight from the cow that has not been pasteurized or homogenized). This means there could be some bacteria in the cheese that could potentially be dangerous if eaten too soon.  There are 2 ways to kill bad bacteria... one is Aging the other is pasteurizing the milk first.

   Pasteurization is when you heat the milk to 145 degrees, hold it there for 16 seconds, then plunge the pot into ice water and stir to cool the milk down very fast to 40 degrees. This kills dangerous bacteria but leaves good bacteria to help make good cheese.     It is imperative that you don't over heat or it kills both good and bad bacteria and you won't get good curd and if you under heat you won't kill all the bad bacteria.

The next time I make cheese I will pasteurize our milk first then we can eat the cheese sooner!
Footnote: we could eat the cheese now as our bodies are used to drinking unpasteurized milk but to have someone who is not used to it we wouldn't want to take the chance of serving it until it is "ALL people" ready.

I had also made Whey Ricotta - this is how that turned out! I got about a 1/2 cup of Ricotta out of that BIG pot of whey.  I put it in this container... added some sea salt for preservative and its now ready to eat.  I could add some herbs but decided to keep it "natural". 

My plan next time is not only to pasteurize the milk first but to skim the cream off the top of the raw milk... make butter out of the cream and make a lower fat cheese out of the skimmed milk.