six impossible things before breakfast 139guess what?—lactose. These selective bugs munch through the milk,
turning the lactose into harmless lactic acid, which causes the curdling.
The sugars that still remain are dissolved in the whey. As this liquid
separates and is drained off from the curd, lactose goes with it. Heating,
pressing, and aging the curd will get rid of still more whey, making it
harder and generally sharper- flavored. As a rule, the harder the cheese,
the lower the lactose content. (Anything less than 2 percent lactose is
tolerable for just about everybody.) Also, higher fat content means less
lactose—butter has none. Conversely, sweet condensed milk is 12 per-
cent lactose. For other products, the amount of lactose removed depends
on the bacterial cultures used for fermentation. A good live- culture yogurt
contains as many as five different sugar- eating bacteria. A little biochem-
istry goes a long way, in safely navigating the dairy path.
At our house soft cheeses were the tricky terrain. Factory- made
cheeses can vary enormously in lactose content. Fermentation and whey
removal take time that mass production doesn’t always allow. Some soft
cheeses are not cultured at all, but curdled simply by adding an acid. For
whatever reason, store- bought cream cheese proved consistently inedible
for us. But I don’t like to give up. If I could monitor the process myself,
seeing personally to lactose removal, I wondered if I might get something
edible.
Soft cheeses are ridiculously easy to make, it turns out. The hardest
part is ordering the cultures (by catalog or online). With these packets of
cheesemaking bugs in your freezer and a gallon of good milk, plus a ther-
mometer, colander, and some cheesecloth, soft cheeses are at your com-
mand: in a stainless steel pot, warm the milk to 85 degrees, open the
culture packet, and stir the contents into the milk. Take the pot off the
stove, cover, let it stand overnight. By the next morning it will have gelled
into a soft white curd. Spoon this into a cheesecloth- lined colander and
let the whey run off. Salt it, spread it on bread, smile. Different bacterial
cultures make different cheeses. The bugs stay up all night doing the
work, not you. You just sleep. Is that not cool?
Our chevre and fromagina were so tasty, and digestible, we were in-
spired to try hard cheeses. These are more work, but it’s basically the
same process. Most recipes call for both a bacterial culture and rennet (a