Making Chèvre

Chèvre is French for "goat."  Bunny, one of our Nubian goats is in milk now.  We milk her twice a day - once at 6 am and another time at around 5 pm and get almost two quarts.  Here is Bunny all cleaned up in her stanchion.  It holds her head firmly in place while she eats and we milk.  While cows have four teats, goats only have two.  The milking goes very quickly.  Agnes is one of our other Nubian goats that is in milk, but her baby is strong and drinks every drop of her milk, so we don't have to milk her out.

For the past couple of decades, we've milked cows and goats through a muslin cloth filter placed over the bucket (for cows) and over a quart jar (for goats).  Tricia just purchased stainless steel funnels with a paper filter that fits in the bottom.  We find it works much better.  The muslin cloth filter is used day after day and had to be cleaned and disinfected, while the paper filters are disposable and a new one is used for each milking session.

Today we'll be making Chèvre cheese using a half gallon of Bunny's goat milk and a half packet of Chèvre starter.  Our starter was old, so we were unsure if it was going to work.  You'll find out at the end of the post if it works.  Here's the starter:

Here is the recipe that we're using.  Chèvre is a creamy, soft cheese similar to cream cheese.

Following the directions, we heat the milk to 86 degrees and add the starter and stir.

Then we cover the milk and let it sit at room temperature (not below 72 degrees) for 12 hours.  When we open the lid in 12 hours, we'll know if the starter was still active.

The proof is in the pudding - or curds, to change the saying up to fit.  We open the lid, tilt the pot and...  The cheese has set!  There are curds that have formed and the whey is on the bottom.  Remember Little Miss Muffet?  The nursery thyme says "She sat on a tuffet, eating her curds and whey."  I had to look up what a tuffet is.  It is a small foot stool.  Along came a spider that sat down beside her and frightened Miss Muffet away...  Well, no footstools or spiders involved in our cheesemaking or eating adventure.

We pour the curds and whey into a cheesemaking strainer to separate them.  The whey flows to the bottom over time, leaving the curds in the basket.  We'll save the whey to use later in lacto-fermentation of vegetables.  Here are the curds in the basket, slowly draining the whey off.

You can add herbs or spices to this.  Tricia just eats it plain.  We also use it to make smoothies with by adding berries.  It came out really good!  It'll store in the fridge for about a week, but we've completely finished this batch already.  Perhaps in a post next week, we'll be making another type of soft goat cheese.  Bunny, unfortunately, lost both of her babies.  One was stillborn and the other was so weak that she died after about a week.  Bunny is still in milk and making lots of milk, so we'll continue milking her and making cheese.  We're also going to attempt to make goat milk cajeta.  Cajeta is a goat milk caramel.  Can't wait to make that.