Urban Cheese Craft on Chocolate Covered Bacon

Do you love cheese? Have you ever thought of making your own mozzarella or how about Paneer, or Cheve? You probably though it would be too difficult to do, and too expensive, right? Well no, not really, we found a great small company that makes DIY cheese kits. That’s right you can make some of your favorite cheese in less than and hour! Claudia from Urban Cheese Craft is the brains behind the operation and she joined us today on Chocolate Covered Bacon-The best in independent food finds.

Claudia was kind enough to share her inspiration behind creating these wonderful kits. While attending meetings and get togethers, she would bring some of her homemade cheese. She told us, “I kept getting the questions of how I made cheese, where I got the ingredients etc. I was literally being asked for entire processes at parties!!” With most cheese making ingredients only being sold in amounts large enough to make incredibly large batches, Claudia set out to break them down and make them into smaller kits. Each kit includes all the items you need to make cheese with 2 exceptions, the milk and the pot. You get the instructions that describe how to make the cheese that you have purchased the kit for, cheese cloth, rennet (vegetable based), citric acid, cheese salt and a cheese thermometer. There is enough in each kit to make 10 batches of cheese. She recommends that you find a great milk vendor that does not ultra-pasteurize the milk. Most commercial milk companies use this process, because it is faster. The difficulty comes with the high heat that they use to pasteurize the milk. When milk gets to hot it kills off some of the good things in the milk that makes it possible to make good cheese. So you want milk that has been slow pasteurized if possible, also known as batch pasteurized. You can go to MilkFacts.info for more information on the pasteurization of milk, if you would like to learn more.

Once you have created your first cheese, and tried it out, you can check out her blog and get some great recipes for some different takes on the cheese. There is nothing like fresh mozzarella in a caprese salad or on top of some chicken parmesan, but if you want to try some great snacking recipes she has some great ideas for you to try out. Claudia likes to update her blog with new ideas that she or her customers have come up with, which helps all of us enjoy the fruits of each others labor.

There are so many kinds of cheese that you can make from home, but Claudia has decided to start you off with just the basic cheese, the ones that you can complete in just a few hours. However she has begun to experiment with making Feta and some other aged cheese which you can also learn about on her blog. So be sure to check up on her often, as you never know what she may be coming up with next.

Please take some time and stop by Urban Cheese Craft to discover what you can make in your own home. If you’re running short on supplies, but want to make more cheese, you can always order extra supplies from Urban Cheese Craft too. This makes it a convenient stop for both the new and slightly more experience cheese crafter. Be sure to tune in again next week when we have some wonderful sweets to curb your cravings from Shake Your Bon Bon’s.

--James, ClosetCreature, your host