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| Home Cheese Making: Recipes for 75 Delicious Cheeses | 
 enlarge | Author: Ricki Carroll
Publisher: Storey Publishing, LLC
Category: Book
List Price: $16.95
Buy New: $10.13
You Save: $6.82 (40%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  31 reviews
Sales Rank: 1998
Media: Paperback
Edition: 3
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 224
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.8 x 7 x 0.8
ISBN: 1580174647
Dewey Decimal Number: 637.3
UPC: 037038174649
EAN: 9781580174640
ASIN: 1580174647
Publication Date: October 14, 2002
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Absolutely Brand New & In Stock. 100% 30-Day Money Back. Direct from our warehouse. Ships by USPS. 1+ million customers served-In business since 1986. Happy Customers is Our #1 Goal. Toll Free Support
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Product Description
The classic home cheese making primer has been updated and revised to reflect the increased interest in artisanal-quality cheeses and the availability of cheese making supplies and equipment. Here are 85 recipes for cheeses and other dairy products that require basic cheese making techniques and the freshest of ingredients, offering the satisfaction of turning out a coveted delicacy. Among the step-by-step tested recipes for cheese varieties are farmhouse cheddar, gouda, fromage blanc, queso blanco, marscarpone, ricotta, and 30-minute mozzarella. Recipes for dairy products include crFme frafche, sour cream, yogurt, keifer, buttermilk, and clotted cream. There are also 60 recipes for cooking with cheese, including such treats as Ricotta Pancakes with Banana Pecan Syrup, Cream Cheese Muffins, Broiled Pears and Vermont Shepherd Cheese, Prosciutto and Cheese Calzones, and Grilled Vegetable Stacks with Roasted Red Pepper Sauce. Profiles of home cheese makers and artisan cheese makers scattered throughout the text share the stories of people who love to make and eat good cheese. Plus information on how to enjoy homemade cheeses, how to serve a cheese course at home, cheese tips, lore, quotes, cheese making glossary, and more.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 26 more reviews...
 Excellent Foodie Background Reading. Good cheese too April 25, 2005
194 out of 204 found this review helpful
`Home Cheese Making', 3rd Edition, formerly `Cheesemaking Made Easy' by cheesemaking equipment supplier, Ricki Carroll is one of those books like Sandor Ellix Katz's book `Wild Fermentation' and Sally Fallon's Nourishing Traditions' which a dedicated foodie should read, if only to appreciate exactly how cheese is made and to thereby appreciate the differences between hard and soft cheeses as well as cheeses made from cow, goat, buffalo, and sheep milk. The procedures for cheesemaking can give us a much closer connection between everyday cooking and the transformations which turn milk into cheese than can be achieved by even a close reading of Harold McGee's chapter on milk in `On Food and Cooking'.
Aside from dedicated foodies and the armchair foodies whose experience is largely from Food Network travelogues, there is the hard core cheese hobbyist and unregenerated counterculture `Whole Earth Catalogue Hippie' who grows a lot of their own food and makes their own wine or beer to foster an independence from commercial products. This book is really for you.
The first thing which both pleased and surprised me about the book is that it does not limit itself to soft, fresh cheeses such as queso blanco, mozzarella, cream cheese, mascarpone and mozzarella. It doesn't even stop at cured mozzarella, giving provolone. It goes all the way to the hard grana cheeses such as Romano and Parmesan, plus cheddar, blue cheeses, and the soft cured cheeses (Brie, Camembert, Limburger) along the way.
One thing I should not minimize is that while the learning curve from conventional cooking to cheesemaking is not very steep, the investment in time, equipment, and special techniques for cleaning and sterilization may be a bit more than you will encounter when you get into some new culinary fields such as bread baking, souffles, and preserves. While buttermilk and creme fraiche may be pretty easy, even a product as simple as cottage cheese requires at least two specialized ingredients not carried by your local megamart.
In fact, if you are already familiar with the techniques involved in home beer brewing, canning, pickling, or wine making, you are probably already halfway to having the necessary skills and space needed to do serious cheesemaking. Unfortunately, this does not give you a leg up to access to the best raw materials. I suspect that serious cheesemaking for most types of cheeses may be beyond the resources of a typical city apartment or condo dweller, unless you have the time to take regular trips to farms to obtain the right kinds of milk. While I have not looked for them in New York City, I suspect that even Zabars doesn't have a lot of the raw materials you will need for recipes in this book.
While my favorite megamart does have only conventionally pasteurized cow's milk, it has no goat's milk, sheep's milk, unpasteurized milk, or single pasteurized cream. The very best location for getting into serious cheesemaking is probably in a standalone house and garage located close to goodly supply of dairy farmers. Living close to people like the Amish or Mennonites who just may do this on a regular basis, not to mention have a handy supply of raw cow's milk may be the very best venue for mastering cheesemaking.
It occurs to me that I have not given this book enough credit. In addition to many recipes for some very, very serious long-term cheese making, there are a number of recipes for things such as buttermilk, creme fraiche, sour cream, kefir, yogurt, butter, ghee, paskha and clotted cream. Unlike recipes you may find in most general cookbooks, the recipes for buttermilk, sour cream, and creme fraiche are not `approximations' or close substitutes. They are the real deal, which means that the recipes call for the kind of starter culture that can only be bought from a speciality mail order source.
Note that while the book does cover some simple yogurt recipes, I would not push it as a book on yogurt making. If that is your real interest, look for a title specializing in yogurt.
The general utility of the book is further enhanced by Chapter 11 that includes a quick course on the proper techniques for cutting and serving cheese. This same chapter contains several recipes for staple products using buttermilk, ricotta, fromage blanc, and yogurt. These are mostly breads, muffins and biscuits. It also has several recipes for dairy-based dips, spreads, dressings, appetizers, salads, pizzas, and veggie dishes. Personally, if I ever wanted to go beyond the fringe with foodie mania, I would much sooner go in the direction of cheese making and artisinal breads than towards the raw food doctrines. Those ancient Greeks and Romans knew a good thing when they saw it!
It will probably not be lost on you that the book's author happens to be in the business (New England Cheesemaking Supply Company) of selling equipment for making cheese in small batches, so the book is pretty self serving, but it is still an excellent introduction to the craft with several references to sources other than the author's own company. The end of the book also gives a generous number of references to artisinal cheesemakers, cheesemaking journals, and a very nice bibliography with some more advanced texts.
 Not bad, but there's better out there. June 22, 2003
71 out of 74 found this review helpful
After much experience with wine and beermaking, I decided to try making my own cheese. Well, it is defiantely not a trivial matter. We are not making pasta here... This book was not bad, and helped me understand the process of making cheese but the actual recipes were confusing and hard to follow. If you have never made cheese before, try another book. There are better ones out there by Shane Sokol & Barbara Ciletti for beginners. In summary: a nice book if you want some insight into the cheesemaking process, but on the "how-to" side, the book is of limited use once you have gone past your first steps.
 I think is a wonderful book March 16, 2004
64 out of 69 found this review helpful
I am very disapointed to read a negative comment about this book of Ricki Carroll, because being myself a dairy microbiologist and working everyday with cheeses, as Mrs. Carroll, I really find her book a great reference for anyone who wants to start making cheese from home from the very begining, or even for proffesionals to clarify some general concepts. You will find in this book good and precise explanations about a difficult topic, not always easy to explain, what she masters well. Is an affordable book for anyone interested in making our own cheese.
Cheese Gromit! March 19, 2006
36 out of 37 found this review helpful
I had tried to make cheese from recipies I had found online with little success. I was rather frustrated and decided to buy this book and see what I was doing wrong. My first batch was a chedder cheese which came out exactly as the book promiced first time. My second batch was a gouda cheese which I upsized to a 3 gallon batch from the 2 gallon recipie using the instructions in the book and once again it came out perfect.
For the money it has to be the best aid to a home cheesemaker that one can buy. I highly recomend this book to anyone who wants to start out making cheese.
 Disapointing June 23, 2004
34 out of 50 found this review helpful
Now that I can finally make a decent cheese I'm amazed at how the instructions are confusing and at times missing necessary information. (E.g. how much mold to add to the milk). I feel like my lack of early success due to relying on this book almost put me off from cheesemaking altogether. She never gives a good overall picture of how things should look or feel. (...)
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