The Big Cheese

There has been talk of dairy goats around the homestead, and if one has dairy goats, one has goat milk (duh) that needs to be dealt with. The Big Guy, encouraged by his mad bread making skillz, decided that he needed to learn how to make cheese so that when the goats arrived, he'd be ready for them.

One day I discovered the refrigerator stuffed full of gallons of whole milk and half gallons of buttermilk. The smell of freshly cut wood wafted in from the garage. Strange little packages arrived containing exotic ingredients like rennet and mesophilic culture. His pored over his new cheese-making book, occasionally blurting out the name of a cheese he was eager to make.

I like cheese, so at first, I was encouraging and tolerant of not being able to put anything in the fridge. Then I learned his first project was to be "harzer kaese," or German sour milk cheese. Or, as I like to call it, "What the hell stinks?"

Here we see some milk being heated. I think this was for the stinky cheese, but I don't really know what's going on in the cheese biz, so it could've been for another type.

This shows the curd cut. I think that's what he called it. It's the part where the whey gets separated from the curd.

The Big Cheese. He looks so happy here because I told him, "Stick out your chin!" He's not a very cooperative subject, so instead he pursed his lips and kept his chin right where it was.

The curd is draining. Hungry yet?

The $20 homemade cheese press. The cheese-to-be is in that white cylinder. The milk jug is filled with water, and it holds down the press that squeezes the cheese. The liquid runs off the tin foil chute into the pie plate that's set inside the top drawer of the kitchen island. It's fancy.

Here he is painting the wax on a gouda. Gouda cheese I might eat.

Ready to age. I made the label.

Cheeses on the drying rack. I think it's bamboo. So much new stuff kept showing up, I lost track. The big round is Havarti, the smaller ones are stinkies. These get moved into a plastic tub in the garage where The Big Cheese monitors the temperature and humidity levels.

He says these are the last of the cheeses for now because soon the weather will be warmer, and he'll have no way to keep them as cool as they need to be. Also, we don't have goats yet.

From Brot to Brioche

It all began with The Big Guy's quest for good German rye bread. His folks would occasionally bring some from the German store, but he decided that it was something that needed to be more readily available. His eventual success with that is chronicled here. For Christmas, his mom gave him a River Cottage bread cookbook, and things escalated.

The bread maker at Sourdough Gap before he succumbed fully to Bread Fever.

Trips to the natural market became necessary for some ingredients.

A sourdough starter bubbling away. These have become a fixture on my kitchen counters. I still think of them as my counters, although that makes them my crumbs, so I'm learning to let go.

This kitschy terra cotta bread pan was spotted by one of his coworkers at a garage sale. I like the farm animals on it ('specially that chicken!)

Today was a particularly productive baking day for The Big Breadman Guy. Rye, pumpernickel, and sourdough. The rye was a bit too dense this time, so it's been cubed for chicken feed, although I'm now thinking croutons might be good.

He has begun to explore his more creative side with the textures and patterns.

Besides the increase in counter-crumbs, the only real downside for me is that I do not like the sorts of breads he favors. Or maybe that's an upside -- more for him, less of me.

Be that as it may, even when you don't care for a particular kind of bread, it all smells outrageous when it's baking, and after whiffing fresh-baked goodness week after week, the little glutton in me wanted some bread. Bread. Now.

And so I convinced him to make some brioche. Enough of this heavy, stodgy German bread, I said. Use those beautiful eggs our chickens gave you, and give the French their due, I insisted.

Merci.