Home Made Cheese 2: Labneh (or Yogurt Cheese)

Cheese making is the art of removing whey from curd. There are a million ways to do that, which is why there are a million types of cheese.

Last week I taught you how to make paneer and whole milk ricotta by heating milk, adding vinegar, and straining the curds from the whey.

Only a few types of cheese utilize vinegar to separate curd from whey, most cheeses rely on beneficial bacteria to ferment the milk for natural acidification.

In part 2 of this series on cheese making, let me introduce an important principle of cheese making: culture.

Culture refers to the beneficial bacteria that are added to the milk to colonize it and transform the lactose (milk sugar) to lactic acid. When milk becomes acific enough, it naturally separates into curds and whey.

Some cheeses also use rennet to set the curd (we will get to rennet set cheeses later). Cheeses that rely solely on acidification to set the curd are known as acid set cheeses, and tend to have a soft, pasty consistency and they do not melt. Cream cheese is a well known example of acid set cheese.

There are two groups of cheese cultures: mesophilic and thermophilic. Species of bacteria are grouped by the temperatures that they multiply in. Meso means middle, thermo means hot.

• Mesophilic bacteria thrive in mid range temperatures of around 70 - 100F and include species like Lactococcus lactis ss. lactis and Lactococcus lactis ss. cremoris.

• Thermophilic bacteria thrive in temperatures between 100 - 125F and include species like Streptococcus thermophilus and Lactobacillus helveticus.

Mesophilic and thermophilic bacteria and NOT interchangable, although there are some blends of culture you can buy that have both types ("farmhouse" blends).

If you are looking for sources of culture in the grocery store, cultured "buttermilk" is mesophilic and plain yogurt is thermophilic (check that the package has live active cultures).

Cheese making suppliers sell blends of bacteria species that have been selected for specific flavors that are favored for cheese making. These are sold as powder. Often the description on the website will give suggestions for what types of cheeses can be made with a given blend, but they will always, at a minimum, tell you if it is mesophilic or thermophilic.

Bacteria help make cheese in four ways:

• they acidify the milk, which helps set the curd

• the acidity causes chemical reactions that impact the texture of the cheese

• they colonize the milk, which means that harmful bacteria are not able to flourish

• cheese making bacteria cause flavor compounds to develop as the cheese ages

(There is a way to propogate native bacteria in raw milk for your culture, but that is beyond the scope of today's blog.)

Labneh, or Yogurt Cheese

Herbed soft cheese balls marinating to perfection in olive oil.

Labneh is an acid set cheese that is made by culturing milk into yogurt, draining the whey out of the yogurt, adding salt and herbs, and preserving it by submerging balls of it in olive oil.

Because yogurt is easy to come by, you can make labneh without culturing the milk yourself. Be careful, however, because many commercial yogurts have thickeners and stabilizers and will not drain. The yogurt MUST drain thoroughly for the cheese to age properly. If you buy yogurt to make this cheese, check that its only ingredients are milk and bacteria cultures, no corn starch, guar gum, or anything to thicken it.

Materials needed:

pot to hold a half gallon of milk, preferably a double boiler

large spoon

thermometer

tightly woven cheese cloth such as butter muslin or a clean, inverted pillow case

large bowl

incubating vessel such as a yogatherm or cooler with warm water

storage jar

cool place to age the cheese such as a basement or refrigerator

Ingredients:

1/2 gallon of yogurt

1/2 tsp NON IODIZED salt

1/2 cup zaatar or other herb blend

1 pint of olive oil

To make yogurt:

Traditional yogurt is made by heating the milk to 185F and then cooling it to 110F before it is innocculated with bacteria. The reason for this is not to pasteurize it. Rather, heating it causes the albumin protein to thicken as the milk sets, whereas the albumin would remain liquid and be lost to the whey if you did not heat it to 185. Yogurt will be thicker and the cheese yield will be slightly higher if you heat it. Warming raw milk only to 110F will yield a yogurt that is more drinkable than spoonable. Either type of yogurt will work for this labneh recipe. The important thing is that the milk becomes acidic enough that the curd thickens and thus will separate from the whey.

Notice the inner pot with milk and the outer pot with hot water.

Pour a half gallon of raw milk into a pot. if you have the ability to create a double boiler by putting the pot with the milk in a larger pot filled with hot water, do!! That will make it easy to heat it quickly without risk of scorching the milk.

Optional: heat the milk to 185F. If you do not have a double boiler, stir frequenlty and thoroughly to avoid the milk scorching on the bottom of the pot. Once it reaches 185, remove from the heat and let it cool to 110F.

Bring your milk to 110F. Add either powdered yogurt culture from a cheese making supplier according to packet directions, or stir in 2 tbs of live active yogurt.

Finished yogurt in my yogatherm.

Pour into an incubating vessel. There are many options for this. The easiest is to purchase something like a yogatherm, which is a plastic tub that holds the warm milk inside of an insulating shell. Another option is to pour the milk back to its jar and place the jar in a cooler filled water that is 110F (have the water a little warmer at first so that as the cooler absorbs some heat, it does not cool down the water too much.)

Allow the milk to incubate for at least 12 hours. Normally you can stop incubating at 8 hours and the yogurt will be thick enough to eat, but if you are going to make cheese, it's good to let it set just a little longer so that the curd really firms up.

Once you have your yogurt, the fun begins!

Spooning yogurt into a cheese cloth.

1. Put a tightly woven cheese cloth (butter muslin or a clean inverted pillow case are both good options) in a large bowl. Pour the yogurt into the cheese cloth. Tie opposite corners of the cloth together so you have two knots forming a bag. Hang this over the bowl to drain. I have cup hooks on a shelf over my counter that work well for hanging. Some people suspend it from a wooden spoon and rest the ends of the spoon on the rim of the bowl. Make sure that the hanging cheese stays above the rising pool of whey underneath.

Whey dripping into a bowl as the yogurt transforms into cheese.

2. Wait. The longer the cheese hangs, the drier it will become. If you only hang it for an hour, it will yield Greek yogurt. Hanging for 12 hours will give you quark. To make labneh, it needs to lose as much whey as possible, and you need to hang it for 24 hours.

3. Salt the cheese. Stir in 1/2 tsp of NON IODIZED salt. (Please note that himalayan salt sometimes makes cheese gritty, so maybe use something else.) Salt is essential to preserve the labneh as it ages. If you prefer a salt free cheese, eat it fresh.

4. Hang the cheese again for another 4 hours. The salt will expel more whey. If the curd is wet, it will cause problems during aging. The curd should be dry and pasty, kind of like sculpting clay.

Drained, salted cheese, herbs and olive oil.

5. Form the cheese into 1 inch balls and coat each ball in dried herbs.

6. Fill a quart jar half way with olive oil. Submerge the cheese balls one at a time by lowering them in with a spoon. Make sure that the top cheeses are completely covered with oil.

7. Age the cheese for at least a month, up to 8 months in a cool basement or in your fridge. The cheeses should remain submerged if the yogurt drained sufficiently. (Floating cheese means something went wrong.) If the oil thickens because it is cold, let it warm up for serving so that you can remove one at a time without disturbing the others around it.

Enjoy labneh on crackers or pita bread, on eggs, in salad, or on roast vegetables.

What kind of dairy products would you love to make at home?