Making Each Kind

The Making wing is the universal sequence every rennet cheese follows. This one is the settings: what changes between a gouda and a Parmigiano, family by family, with the numbers — and an honest account of which of these I have actually made.

Fresh & Acid-Set

Fresh & Acid-Set Two routes to the same pH 4.6, producing two different materials — and the one place in this whole section where the no-UHT rule does not apply. Explore →

Pasta Filata

Pasta Filata The stretch is a pH event, not a temperature one. The window is 5.4 down to 5.0 and a fermenting curd can cross it in under an hour — so you test a golf ball, not a clock. Explore →

Soft-Ripened & Bloomy

Soft-Ripened & Bloomy It ripens from the outside in, which fixes the format at an inch and a half. And the mould never stops on its own — the paper wrap is the brake. Explore →

Washed Rind

Washed Rind You are not cleaning it, you are farming it. And B. linens cannot start until yeast has raised the surface pH for it — so the first fortnight of washing is a yeast schedule. Explore →

Blue & Mould-Ripened

Blue & Mould-Ripened The one family where a loose, badly-knit, air-filled curd is the specification — and where dry salting rather than brining is a structural decision, not a tradition. Explore →

Semi-Soft Washed-Curd

Semi-Soft Washed-Curd Gouda, edam, colby. You take the lactose away from your own bacteria, the cheese finishes two-tenths of a pH point higher, and that is the entire family. Explore →

Hard-Pressed & Cheddar

Hard-Pressed & Cheddar Cheddaring is not pressing — it is stacking, turning, and waiting for the curd to tear like cooked chicken breast. Then you salt the curd, not the wheel. Explore →

Cooked-Pressed Alpine

Cooked-Pressed Alpine The cook is hot enough to kill a mesophilic culture, which is the substitution that ruins the most wheels. Plus the warm room nobody has — and my own Swiss that came out with no eyes. Explore →

Grating & Extra-Hard

Grating & Extra-Hard Rice-grain curd, weeks in brine, and two years of weekly turning. The crystals are tyrosine, and they are the receipt — you cannot fake them and you cannot rush them. Explore →

Brined & Pickled

Brined & Pickled Feta and halloumi share a bucket and refuse to melt for opposite reasons. And a brine without calcium in it takes a perfectly good cheese apart in about a week. Explore →

Whey & Second-Run

Whey & Second-Run Whether there is a second cheese in the pot was decided by the first one. Sweet whey gives ricotta; acid whey gives almost nothing, and no technique changes that. Explore →

Smoked & Flavoured

Smoked & Flavoured Everything here has a 90 °F ceiling. Use dried, not fresh. And the easiest trick in the section is the one I started with: flavour the salt, not the cheese. Explore →