A collection of morsels from three years of making cheese at home: a work in progress that I update as I gather more information and that I hope is useful¹.

Books I use:

• Home Cheese Making by Ricki Carroll [my first cheese-making book, which I still use regularly]
• 200 Easy Homemade Cheese Recipes by Debra Amrein-Boyes [my second book and another resource for cheese-making recipes I use regularly]
• Mastering Artisan Cheesemaking by Gianaclis Caldwell [my most recent acquisition]
  
• On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee (Chapter 1: Milk and Dairy Products provides a wealth of useful information and it is a pleasant read)

Websites with cheese-making recipes and other information:

• New England Cheesemaking Supply Company: website, the recipe page [a fundamental resource for my current cheese-making adventures], monthly newsletter, and blog
• Dr. Fankhauser’s Cheese page
• Fias Co Farm Home Dairying & Cheesemaking
• Cheese Chick (in particular, the Cheese in Depth Series, which describes the cheese-making process and the different categories of cheese)
• Rhonda’s step-by-step instructions for making a small batch of mother culture, fresh cultured cheese, cultured butter and buttermilk
  
• Mary Karlin’s Artisan Cheesemaking at Home companion website, which includes a set of useful forms and charts
  

Where to get supplies:

– in store (Bay Area and the North Coast):

• The Beverage People (Santa Rosa, CA): pretty much anything you may need
• The Food Mill (Oakland, CA): liquid (vegetable) rennet
• Rainbow Grocery (San Francisco, CA): liquid (vegetable) rennet
• Mollie Stone’s (San Francisco, CA, Twin Peaks location): rennet tablets
• North Coast Co-op (Arcata and Eureka, CA): a wide selection of products, including rennet, cultures, salt, wax, calcium chloride

– online:

• New England Cheesemaking Supply Company: everything you may need
• The Beverage People (Santa Rosa, CA): a wide selection of products, including rennet, cheese cultures, molds
• Hoegger Goat supply: everything you may need
• Cheesypress: my cheese press
• Urban Cheesecraft (Portland, OR): cheese-making kits and refills
• The Cheesemaker: everything you may need
• The Grape and Granary: everything you may need
• Dairy Connection, Inc.: everything you may need

– elsewhere:

• if you live in France or Italy, ask for rennet at the pharmacy

Online forum dedicated to making cheese. It includes both articles and a number of forums on a wide variety of topics:

• Cheese Forum articles
• Cheese Forum forums
  

About milk in relation to cheese making:

• From the New England Cheesemaking Supply Company web site: All About Milk, Milk, FAQ about Milk

My adventures in cheese making:

• my posts on making cheese at home (from mascarpone to fromage blanc to Caerphilly to Jarlsberg and more)
• my article Making Cheese with Lao Tzu published on Edible East Bay [download pdf file from the Contents page]
• my articles Say (Homemade) Cheese and Say Cheese — Again published on The North Coast Journal

Other interesting sites that talk about cheese:

• Il portale del formaggio (cheese portal): site includes information in English about Italian PDO cheeses and also European cheeses
  

Do you have useful information to share?

Leave a comment on this page or email me at simosite AT mac DOT com

¹ I do not have a business relationship with any of the stores or companies listed on this page. This is not an advertisement.