You’ve now made mozzarella and ricotta cheese, how about a little dessert to go with your fantastic lasagna?
Bag cheese (also known as lactic cheese, farmer’s cheese, and acid-curd cheese) is a soft spreadable cheese with the same consistency of cream cheese.
INGREDIENTS
1 gallon fresh milk (not UHT shelf-milk)
1 packet direct-set mesophilic starter (Or you can make your own mesophilic starter culture, which will stretch your culture to make many batches of cheese. Check your Cheese Making Cookbook on page 20 for how to do so)
3 drops liquid rennet mixed with 1/3 cup cool water (non-chlorinated as chlorine messes with the rennet)…or use 1/4 tablet rennet mixed with 1/4 cup water
DIRECTIONS
Heat the milk to 86F and add the starter. Mix.
Add 1 teaspoon of the rennet water and stir with an up and down motion so that the rennet is well dispersed in the milk.
Cover the pot and let it sit at close to 72F for 12 hours until the curd solidifies and looks like that yogurt we made earlier. It will pull away from the side of the pot when it’s ready.
Pour the curd into a fine cheesecloth and hang the bag over the sink for 12 hours. (Hence the name: bag cheese.) If the temperature was cool in the house you may have to hang it for longer. We hung it for 24 hours.
And now-BAM!- you have just the right amount of bag cheese to substitute for the cream cheese in cheesecake.
Wow! Did you happen to catch any episodes of “How It’s Made” while in the States? You could have your own show!
I’ve never even heard of “How It’s Made”. My sister also recommended that we have our own reality show, but I fear we’d be quite boring.