Soft cheese making

[Bickleighbabe]

The latest Lakeland catalog has a tempting recipe book and a shiny pan in which apparently it's dead easy to make all sorts of wonderful soft cheese. I'm really tempted but is it that easy?

Does anyone have any experience of making soft cheese at home? Should I give it a go? (or will the gear end up with the bread maker and the ice cream maker?)

I'm not sure about soft cheese in general, but we've made paneer before and it is very easy. Something like this.

I made paneer before it was very easy.

But it went a bit blue when cooked, so don't take advice from me.

Ours didn't go blue. But a surprisingly large amount of milk produces a surprisingly small amount of paneer. Only do frequently if you have resident dairy cow.

Making soft cheese can be very easy. You can literally take milk, add an acid (of your choosing) and then wrap in muslin cloth and put it in a strainer. The whey will then drip away and you have cheese! It's very bland and needs flavoring though, but you can change the consistency by letting more/less whey drain. You can do the same with yogurt, no need to add an acid though, and you get "yogurt cheese". Have fun with trying somethings on your own before you get the fancy pan to see if you like it :). Ricotta and cottage cheese are two other recipes you can try out, as well as paneer.

Thanks everyone for your feedback. I've decided to get a book out of the library to give it a go and with stuff i already have in the kitchen. At least I won't be wasting any money on shiny new equipment from the alluring Lakeland catelog (shakes fist at Lakeland marketeers damn them!)
I'm also going to dig out bread maker to fulfil my creative urges...it'll settle down, shh shh...

I'd love to have a go at this. Does anyone know if the milk must be unpasteurised or raw? Or can I use ordinary full fat organic?

Will try these Hugh F-W's cheese recipes.

Oh I was sorely tempted by the Lakeland catalogue as well, Bickleighbabe!

Kitchen porn, I tell you.

Well I just had to go and look at the Lakeland website. There's a very clever mould with holes in it so that the whey drains away. And a book that tells you how to make halloumi. This is gonna get expensive.

Kitchen porn indeed.