Making Neufchatel Cheese

We decided to start making cheese and learned that Neufchatel cheese one of the easiest to make.   Neufchatel is similar to cream cheese and is a soft rennet cheese that is a good cheese to start with for beginners (that's us!)  It is eaten fresh and doesn't require curing.  I looked up the difference between Neufchatel and cream cheese on the Internet and the difference is this:

1. Neufchatel is lower in fat content than cream cheese,
2. Neufchatel originated in France, while cream cheese, although having roots in France, is an American cheese
3. Neufchatel is made with raw milk, while cream cheese is made from cream and pasteurized milk. 

There is a ton of information on the Internet to teach you about cheese making and this is where Tricia found our guide to the art of cheese making:  http://biology.clc.uc.edu/fankhauser/cheese/cheese_course/cheese_course.htm
The information is presently clearly and can be easily followed with pictures and explanations.

So, let's get started.  First we warm the milk to 68 degrees Fahrenheit.  We had to heat it as we refrigerated it after milking.  You don't skim off any cream because the more cream, the creamier your cream cheese will be.  You also don't want to heat the milk too much as you don't want to kill the good bacteria.

Heating up Daisy & Rosie's milk

Then we added 1/4 cup buttermilk.  This adds acidity to the milk so that the rennet will act on it.


Adding buttermilk

This is animal rennet.  It essentially coagulates the milk protein, causing the curds and whey to separate.  We ordered this on the Internet.  Rennet is a complex of enzymes found in unweaned calves' stomachs that helps them digest their mother's milk.  It is harvested from the stomach of a slaughtered calf and is used in cheese making.

Animal Rennet

The rennet is concentrated and must be diluted in water prior to pouring into the milk.  Add four drops of rennet into a 1/4 cup of water and pour into the gallon of inoculated milk, stir and let sit all day at room temperature.  The milk, like shown below, has formed curds.  The top has a thick yogurt-like texture as the curds have separated from the whey.

Curds have formed

Tricia is now cutting the curds into cubes.


Cutting the curds into cubes.

At this point, you want to ladle off the cut curds.


Ladling off cut curds

We put a clean cloth rag in a sieve over a dutch oven and ladle the curds into it.  This is necessary for draining the whey off of the curds.

Draining more whey off of the curds

 Continue ladling off the curds into your cloth-lined sieve. 

There are a lot of curds.  Almost done.

Now we hang the curds in the refrigerator overnight, allowing the whey to continue draining into a pot below.  You can see all the fresh raw milk in our "milk refrigerator" out in the garage.  Tonight the milk refrigerator is doubling as a cheese-making cooler.

Letting the whey drain from the curds overnight

The next day we remove the cheese and whey

The draining of the curds is complete

The whey will be fed to the chickens.  Some of it will be used to make ricotta cheese.  Here below is the cream cheese ready to eat.  It is very good!

Fresh made Neufchatel cheese!

First, though, before we eat it, we'll add a little kosher salt.

Adding a little salt to the cheese

This neufchatel cheese is perfect for making cheese cake.  In this case it was Benjamin's 12th birthday and Tricia made a "dirt" cake and used some of the fresh cream cheese to make it.  Everyone enjoyed it thoroughly.

Happy 12th Birthday, Benjamin!

The rest of the cheese was put in a yogurt tub and refrigerated for later use.  Tricia and Russ just like to eat spoonfuls of it plain.  I like to put homemade jalapeno pepper jelly over it and eat it as a dip with crackers.   

Homemade neufchatel

Since we mastered that cheese, we'll next attempt a basic cheese and show you the results a little later.