Home-made cheese?

[mayasupernova]

Hello everyone,
I am aware there are plenty of different type of cheese on the market nowadays, and I have tried some myself, but, what do you guys think of just a normal, home-made white cheese?
For the last 15 years, my dad has been buying cow, home-made cheese, from a woman, who lives in a nearby village. He always says he knows she is a clean lady, who takes care of her personal hygiene (considering that most of the people who sell cheese on the market are not well-known for these hygienic things), and the cheese is just fantastically tasty. We have been eating only that one all this time, occasionally buying some made by cheese companies, usually yellow cheese, in the market, or a grocery store.
Have you ever tried cheese straight from the village, made by actually villagers, either from their cows, or goats, or maybe sheep? And if you have, which one do you prefer, made of which animal?

 

[L_B]

I have never had homemade cheese and I don't really know anyone around here who makes it. I bet it would be really quite good though. My mom used to talk about making in back when she was a kid which would have been back in the 30's.

 

[Wilson Wade]

I have tried homemade cheese in the past. The nearby Monastery where I live is famous for making Cheese from Carabao Milk, Carabao is Water Buffalo and they are the work beast of the fields. The cheesemaking capability of the villagers came from the Spanish Colonizers hundreds of years ago. The monks employ several residents in the monastery kitchen and they make homemade cheese as part of a livelihood program. It is called "White cheese" due to its color, In taste i can compare it to Mozarella, quite good actually.

 

[mayasupernova]

I have tried homemade cheese in the past. The nearby Monastery where I live is famous for making Cheese from Carabao Milk, Carabao is Water Buffalo and they are the work beast of the fields. The cheesemaking capability of the villagers came from the Spanish Colonizers hundreds of years ago. The monks employ several residents in the monastery kitchen and they make homemade cheese as part of a livelihood program. It is called "White cheese" due to its color, In taste i can compare it to Mozarella, quite good actually.

Very nice. I am glad that you could taste it. However, I have never tasted Carabao Milk to be honest, or cheese made from it. I would like to. It may be something close to what I mentioned here, with the taste and the look, as you said they also call it 'white cheese', just as we do around here.

 

[kgord]

I haven't ever tried making cheese, but I have made yogurt before. That was fairly simple. I have seen recipes online for making cheese, and I once watched them make mozzarella cheese on TV. It seems like it would be something interesting. I like various types of cheeses..but I guess mostly I will stick to buying them in the store.

 

[OhioTom76]

Yes, I've had home made Mozzarella and various types of locally made "Farmer's Cheese". There is a rather large population of Amish people not far from where I grew up and they would regularly sell goods at local flea markets throughout the year. I enjoyed it, though the cheeses were rather simple in terms of flavor and they were generally limited to soft or semi-soft cheeses.

I've never really had luck making my own "farmers cheese" at home though, no matter how many different methods I tried. Then after doing some reading, I eventually found what I believe to be the problem. Many of them say to start with a heavy cream or a full fat milk. Apparently the pasteurization process commonly used for commercially available milk modifies the fat in it in such a way that such produced cream/milk will not curdle together properly to form a decent cheese. Supposedly, you need unpasteurized milk ideally to make a good cheese. However that is really hard to come by because it's generally illegal to sell it as such in the US.