[Cheese] Using raw milk

[Jack Schmidling]

Barbara Cornelius wrote:

> Like, buying sourdough
> culture freezedried and using that instead of hoping to catch your own
> in your own house.

> Would that be the correct analogy, then?

In a general way, yes but.... bread needs yeast to rise and there are 
many yeasts of various sorts floating around in the air.  Catching one 
that makes bread rise is not all that difficult but the signature of 
sourdough bread is the sour flavor that comes from acidifying bacteria 
that also has to be captured.

The other aspect that is quite different is that the sourdough culture 
sits around for days or weeks trolling for stuff and developing it's 
flavor so by the time you are ready to use it, you have a viable culture.

With cheese you have only about 5 hours to produce enough acid to make 
cheese that will keep for years.  There just is not enough bacteria to 
get that kind of fermentation going in 5 hours.

Brewers deal with the problem routinely.  We buy a culture with a very 
small amount of a pure strain and spend several days building this up to 
a quart or so of working beer before it is pitched into the new batch.

js

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