Cheesemaking 101 — Why make cheese? What are common problems and solutions in cheesemaking? What’s so great about The Ultimate Cheesepress? What are basic beginning tools for cheesemakers? What recipes are great when you’re just starting out? And much more on today’s episode of Know Your Food with Wardee.
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Did you notice the URL listed there on the top picture? I set up the domain of KnowYourFoodPodcast.com just for my podcast — to make it easier for listeners to get to show notes without having to remember how to spell traditionalcookingschool.com.
FYI: You can find each episode easily by using the format below. The # refers to the episode number and each URL will redirect you to the corresponding page on traditionalcookingschool.com:
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Now, back to today’s episode.
What’s in Episode #6?
In this episode of Know Your Food with Wardee, I’m visiting with Jerri Beddell from HomesteaderSupply.com. She’s the business partner of Nance Sparks, my guest on episode #4. Here’s a little bit about Jerri.
“Jerri was born and raised a city girl. She was a nurse for about 30 years, heavily into natural and alternative therapies. She started a small farming venture, with future Homesteader’s Supply business partner Nance Sparks. Together, they learned the many the ways of homesteading raising milk cows, beef cows, pigs, emus, sheep, horses, goats, chickens, ducks, turkeys. They also learned how to create natural milk products, process their own meat, and preserve their own bounty from the garden. When the economy went down, they were able to help friends by sharing their bounty. Then, they turned their talents toward developing Homesteader’s Supply.”
In this episode, Jerri shared soooo much of her wisdom about cheesemaking. Here are just some of the questions she answered:
- How did you get into cheesemaking?
- Why do you like to make cheese?
- Why would you recommend people get into cheesemaking?
- Are there risks with cheesemaking, like common problems or contamination?
- Where did you learn cheesemaking? Who is your inspiration?
- Tell us about your new cheesepress — when and how did you notice a need for it? What problems does it solve?
- How is your cheesepress made?
- What are the minimum (tools, starters, etc.) people need to get started with cheesemaking?
- What beginner recipes would you recommend for people getting started with cheesemaking?
- What resources for cheesemaking would you recommend?
Here are the links mentioned in this episode:
- My Ultimate Cheese Press review and video demonstration
- My online class: Cultured Dairy and Basic Cheese
- Margaret Morris’ The Cheese Maker’s Manual
- Cheesemaking tools at HomesteaderSupply.com (including that whisk Jerri mentioned, which I now have!)
- Urban Homestead South Africa — this week’s farm tour
- Got Questions or Comments? — to leave a voice recording for me to answer or share on the podcast
- My podcast now on Stitcher — search for “Know Your Food with Wardee”
- My podcast on iTunes — search for “Know Your Food with Wardee”
- The Apple Podcasts app — search for “Know Your Food with Wardee”
Enjoy!
What’s Coming Up…
Next week, we change gears completely! Jami Delgado, Real Food Kids teacher from EatNourishing.com — plus her husband Anthony — join me to talk about their school bus conversion. They’re simplifying their life to live within their means, and converting a 1980s school bus into a home for their family of five. They’ve got an awesome story and a sweet perspective on life that I know you’re going to love.
You can get a quick peek at what’s coming by visiting the blog devoted to the conversion story: 2cool4skoolie.com.
For past or current episodes, check out the Know Your Food with Wardee podcast archives.
It’s Your Turn
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Wardeh, We just bought your sourdough A-Z and some recipes call for milk. We are wondering if it’s okay to put yogurt in place of milk with the sourdough, or if the two types of cultures will mess eachother up? Thanks.
Erin — I noticed you did that, and thank you! Thank you also for your GAPS comment which I want to answer but haven’t had time to give it the attention it deserves. 🙁
Yes, you can use yogurt (or kefir) in place of the milk. You might find you need a little more liquid and also that your results are more sour. BUT you’ll also likely get a better rise because there are more organisms to do the work.
Let me know how it goes for you! 🙂
I was going to buy it a year and a half ago, and then suddenly we started GAPS 🙂 Thanks for the reply. I do have to say one thing that was good about GAPS is it forced me to get good at healthy eating. Before I did it as a hobby, a little bit at a time. But all of the sudden I had to learn a lot, so I did it night and day (literally). And now traditional cooking doesn’t seem so overwhelming, ha ha.
Totally enjoyed this last podcast on cheese making with Jerri from Homesteaders Supply. I have been wanting to learn how to make cheese for a while and this podcast was very inspiring. I cannot wait to taste a piece of cheese from my first wheel. Thanks to both you, Wardeh and Jerri!
Carol — I’m glad to hear it! Thanks for your comment and for tuning in. Jerri’s such a great guest and we always have fun together! 🙂
About the ultimate cheese press. 150 years ago, I would imagine wood was the only type of presses available, right? If that was the case do you suppose they would not have had any type of preservative applied to them? Also, do you suppose that from continuous use, the presses would have added benefit directly to the cheeses?
The reason I ask is because I think I would like to buy this press and not have the tung oil applied.
Mary Kay.. In listening to I think the postcast associated with this post, Jerri indicated that you can in fact buy the cheese press without any finish applied.. I’d suggest dropping her a note to see about that..