I was pleasantly surprised to hear one of my favorite radio shows, NPR's Science Friday, tackle the science of cheesemaking on its most recent show. The program featured Liz Thorpe, vice president of Murray's and author of The Cheese Chronicles, a new book about making and selling cheese in America....
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Every Tuesday, Jamie Forrest drops by with Serious Cheese. Photograph courtesy of Hidden Springs Creamery Yesterday's Wall Street Journal ran an interesting article about folks who have given up the corporate life for a life on the farm making cheese. It profiles Wisconsinite Brenda Jensen, whose Hidden Springs Creamery burst on the scene last year with a first place finish in the fresh sheep's milk cheese category at the American Cheese Society annual competition. Crafting small batches of hand-made sheep's milk cheeses, Jensen is beating a new path in a state with an entrenched dairy industry that is decidedly non-artisanal and heavily cow-focused. I (and probably most cheese lovers) have at least fantasized about leaving their urban existence behind to...
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Labor Day has just passed, of course, but we should bear in mind the difficult, ceaseless work that goes into making cheese. It requires intense amounts of backbreaking, sometimes tedious effort, from herding the animals to milking them twice a day, from cutting and stirring the curd to flipping the wheels during aging. Cheesemaking also represents an ongoing sanitation challenge; since milk is a veritable feast for bacteria of all kinds, every piece of cheesemaking equipment that comes into contact with it must be diligently washed. Mateo Kehler of Jasper Hill Farm in Vermont has even gone so far as to call cheesemaking "glorified dishwashing."...
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