Small bacteria, too small to be seen with the naked eye, produce nutritious food for you and your family. It is a tasty food that can be enjoyed as it is or can be used to improve many other foods. This delicious food is cheese.

There are many varieties, but obviously not all that you see in a market. In total, there are around four hundred different types. When you look at the variety of cheeses you buy, ask yourself how they are made and what sets them apart.

Cheese is generally made from cow's milk, but any animal milk can be used. In India, there are buffalo milk cheeses and in the Middle East, camel milk is used to make a cheese called Krutt. Those in Lapland get one with reindeer milk and in Nepal yak milk is used. Goat and sheep milk is also used in many countries.

But when you look at a glass of milk and a piece of cheese, you don't see much like it, do you? However, one comes from the other. Bacteria allow the remarkable transformation of milk into cheese.

Prepare the milk

If you had to make cheese, how would you do it? First of all, remember that milk is ideal for the growth of microorganisms, so it can be easily contaminated. For this reason, the containers and utensils used to make the cheese must be sterilized. If the wrong type of bacteria enters the milk, your cheese-making efforts may not be successful.

To give the bacteria used to make cheese more freedom, heat the milk to destroy some of the microorganisms that are already there. Then add the necessary bacteria to turn the milk into cheese. It is a type of bacteria that produces lactic acid by fermenting milk.

The bacteria can be obtained, in liquid or powder form, from companies specialized in the production of high quality crops. When the powder is placed in a small amount of sterilized milk, the bacteria are reactivated. Consider this milk as your initial culture or your mother's culture. Carefully protect it from contamination by other microorganisms.

It takes twelve to eighteen hours before a mother crop is ready to make a bulk snack. Then, when the loose snack is ready, mix it in the milk tank, which should turn into cheese. This dough starter should represent approximately 4% of the entire tank.

After mixing the loose snack with the milk, a fermentation process begins. This establishes an acidic condition in the milk due to bacterial action. To aid bacteria activity, heat milk to 85 degrees Fahrenheit for the first hour.

Form the curd

When the acid increase in milk is correct, mix the rennet. Rennet contains enzyme rennet, which comes from the cells that line the stomach of a calf. Producers obtain rennet by transforming the lining taken from the calves' fourth stomach.

The rennet acts as a catalyst, causing a chemical action in which the casein in milk coagulates as an insoluble and visible curd. If the acidity of the milk is at the ideal level, the curd will be solid in approximately forty-fifty minutes, filling the entire tank with a solid mass. It looks very similar to yogurt in appearance.

The temperature at which rennet produces a curd that works best for many varieties of cheese is around 86 degrees Fahrenheit. After shaking the rennet through the milk, the tremor must stop and the milk must remain absolutely silent during coagulation.

Cut curd

The solid mass of the curd must be divided to allow the whey or whey to flow. A wire cutter consisting of a series of parallel wires is generally used for this purpose by cheese makers. It is placed in the curd and used in such a way that the curd is cut into 1/4 inch or half inch cubes. Sometimes larger cubes are cut when cheese with a higher moisture content is desired.

While the acid acts on the curd casein, the curd undergoes changes in its physical properties. It overlaps and becomes softer, firmer and more elastic. Cheesemakers use a slicing machine to cut the matte curds of some cheeses into small pieces.

In some cases, the curd is salted at this stage, but in others, salting is carried out later by immersing the cheese brick in a saline solution. The curd pieces are now packed in molds and these are subjected to a pressure of four to eight tonnes.

The amount of pressure varies depending on the type of cheese produced. In some cases, no external pressure is applied. This is the case of Roquefort. If it was compressed too compactly, no air could escape and this would prevent the formation of a desirable mold inside.

Cottage cheese is treated differently. Instead of letting it kill, it is washed two or three times to remove the acidity. Then you can add the pasteurized cream to make the cream cheese. As the ricotta does not ripen, it cannot be kept for a long time and must therefore be eaten fresh.

Ripened cheese

From the presses, the cheese goes to a warehouse for the seasoning process. It also involves a bacterial action that causes breakdown of fats, proteins and carbohydrates. The enzymes produced by bacteria cause these chemical actions and continue throughout the maturation period.

For the ripening process to run smoothly, the temperature and humidity of the warehouse must be carefully controlled. The temperature can vary from 40 to 60 degrees Fahrenheit, depending on the type of cheese, flavor, texture and appearance desired.

The length of time a cheese stays in this temperature-controlled room varies depending on the type of cheese. This can last anywhere from two to forty-eight months. Meanwhile, the bacteria and enzymes they produce cause chemical changes in the cheese, making it softer, more flexible and with a more aromatic flavor. The coloring of the cheese is obtained by adding a coloring.

parasites

As expected, there are parasites that can spoil the cheese. One is the cheese mite. It is a very small insect that looks like a spider. When the mites have infested a cheese, they leave its surface covered with a brown powder. In no time, they can reduce cheese to a lot of dust.

Another pest is the cheese fly. Place the eggs in the cracks and in the cracks of very old cheeses. The worms hatch eggs and enter the cheese when they eat them. So they stay in an empty place until they turn into flies. Obviously, the cheese is spoiled for human consumption. Yet another parasite is a virus called bacteriophage, which can be very destructive in a cheese factory.

Variety of cheeses

Cheeses are classified as belonging to eighteen different types and are generally divided according to their consistency and flavor. The consistency can be sweet, medium or hard and the flavor can be sweet, medium or strong.

Soft cheese can include mature cheese such as camembert, as well as unripe cheese such as cottage cheese. The latter is the simplest of cheeses.

A medium or semi-soft cheese is a ripened cheese. Includes cheeses such as Limburger and Munster.

Hard cheeses are also ripened cheeses and include Swiss and Cheddar. It takes about ten kilos of milk to make a kilo of hard cheese.

A very popular variety is processed cheese. It is produced by mixing and heating several batches of natural cheese. After the addition of an emulsifying agent, this mixture becomes a homogeneous plastic mass. People like to use it for cooking because of the way it melts. However, an undesirable feature is that chemicals are used to emulsify, color, preserve, stabilize and thicken.

Indeed, there is a wide variety of delicious cheeses to choose from. All of these cheeses are excellent protein foods that contain vitamins, calcium, phosphorus and other minerals. And considering the important role of bacteria in cheese making, when you put cheese on the table, you can say that bacteria feed your family.