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When I learned how to make mozzarella awhile back, the chef who was teaching the class started with cheese curds. He heated the curds in hot water, then folded and stretched the softened cheese. The chef said that the curds were available in many supermarkets, including Whole Foods Market.

Afterward, I made a beeline for Whole Foods, where I was informed they were planning to carry the curds — but not yet.

So a few months later a detail about a Cheese Making 101 class that was to be offered locally piqued my interest: ricotta and mozzarella were on the list. Aha! I thought. Who needs Whole Foods? Fresh mozzarella, here I come.

The staff at the Hitchcock Center for the Environment in Amherst, which was offering the class in February, assured me I was going to actually make cheese, not just watch, so I signed up.

My first impression upon arriving was that there was an awfully big crowd there. Forty-four aspiring cheese makers had shown up and one or two additional people arrived hoping someone else would not.

I hadn’t done any research on the instructor, Ricki Carroll of Ashfield, since I prefer to jump into these things without a lot of expectations. Carroll, it turned out, is known as the Queen of Cheese, a claim that would be grandiose if it weren’t pretty much true. She’s been a cheese maker for three decades and through her books, catalogs, classes and Web site has taught thousands of people how to make cheese, including many who have gone on to found artisanal cheese operations.

My fears about a crowded classroom were allayed when we were ushered into a room that had six long tables equipped with cheese-making supplies. Carroll and her assistant had set up a display station with an overhead mirror to give us a clear view of each step that Carroll would demonstrate.

She had us start right in on making curds for a farmhouse Cheddar cheese, since the curds needed some time to form. We added calcium chloride to warm milk while the mesophilic direct set culture — which contains the bacteria that will convert the milk into Cheddar — rehydrated in some water. This type of cheese requires a 60-day aging period and a cheese press of some sort.

While the curds were setting, Carroll demonstrated making queso blanco, a variety familiar to anyone who has had cheese-filled foods at Mexican restaurants. Queso blanco is pretty simple: Heat a gallon of milk to 185 degrees F, slowly add ¼ cup vinegar, raise the temperature to 200 and stir until the milk is completely curdled. Ladle the curds into butter muslin (a tighter weave of cheesecloth) and let them drain for a couple of hours. The resulting cheese is firm and mild-flavored and will take on the flavors of whatever you cook or flavor it with.

If you use citric aid instead of vinegar to coagulate the milk, the result is ricotta. And if you use lemon juice instead of vinegar, you’ll have paneer, the cheese used in Indian cooking. Carroll uses it in stir-fries. I want to work on Ras Malai (paneer balls in rosewater-flavored syrup), my wife’s favorite dessert.

By lunch, our Cheddar was in the cheese press. We had eaten queso blanco and both whole-milk and whey ricotta (made from the liquid left over after the curds are lifted out). The separation of the yellowish whey liquid and white curds was no longer a surprise and we were beginning to be able to distinguish the different curds.

Carroll was using three kinds of store-bought milk, Our Family Farms, Garelick Farms and Mapleline, plus some raw milk brought by one of the participants. The differences in the milk and the various curdling agents created startlingly different flavors of curds. She warned against ultrapasteurized milk, which does not produce a good curd. Most organic milk is ultrapasteurized whether or not it is labeled as such, which makes a local nonorganic milk the preferred choice for home cheese making.

Cheese, which is a way to store milk just as pasta is a way to store eggs, is one of the world’s oldest foods. Most cultures that have animals that can be milked have created some kind of cheese. Over time, each region’s cheese making has been refined and codified.

Milk is a complex mix of proteins, butterfat, water and other compounds, and the goal in cheese making is to remove the water (whey) and coagulate the proteins (primarily casein) into curds. An acid like vinegar, lemon juice or citric acid, or rennet, an enzyme found in sheep’s and cow’s stomachs, is used to coagulate the casein. The resulting curds, which look like soft tofu, are lifted out of the whey. Then they are drained, salted, pressed and, depending on the type of cheese, inoculated with specific bacteria and aged. The different strains of bacteria are a large part of the reason why one batch turns into Cheddar and another into Emmenthaler or Brie.

Controlling the temperature of the milk is another key component of cheese making, since temperature affects how the proteins coagulate and the rate of bacterial growth.

Two of the women at my table said they had signed up for the class following a weekend spent ruining a lot of milk. While an aged farmhouse Cheddar or a ripened Camembert may seem out of reach for the casual cheese maker, the fresh cheeses like queso blanco, ricotta and mozzarella are definitely approachable.

Carroll’s Web site, www.cheesemaking.com, contains recipes, videos, tips and supplies. Essentially, you need a large, heavy-bottomed pot, a thermometer, some cheesecloth or butter muslin, and a coagulant like vinegar (for queso blanco), lemon juice (paneer), citric acid (ricotta and mozzarella) or rennet (mozzarella). All are available on the site. If you are browsing there, you might want to pick up Carroll’s book, “Home Cheese Making,” or her DVD, “Cheese Making 101.”

Carroll and her former husband began making goat cheese on their farm in Ashfield in the 1970s, and started selling cheese-making equipment to offset the costs of their own supplies. This evolved into inventory, a catalog, books, classes, videos, DVDs and the Web site. She has given classes all over the country and in Europe, and observers of the culinary scene say that she can take some of the credit for the recent artisanal cheese movement. In “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle,” for example, a nonfiction account of eating only local food for a year, novelist Barbara Kingsolver talks about Carroll’s cheese-making class.

In the afternoon, Carroll made three batches of mozzarella, one from Our Family Farms milk, one from Mapleline Farms milk and one from raw milk. The differences were startling. The Our Family Farms batch was the softest and tasted super-fresh. The Mapleline Farms cheese was “squeaky” — so chewy that it literally squeaked when we ate it — and tasted like commercially available mozzarellas. The raw-milk mozzarella was the best, sweeter and more complex. I’d use Mapleline Farms milk for mozzarella balls and rolls, while the others would be better for mozzarella I was going to eat right away.

It is these variations in milk, temperatures, cultures and technique that distinguish various cheeses and cheese makers. Whether or not you make any cheese, the knowledge does give you an appreciation of the art and the science that go into cheese.

The following recipes are adapted from the class handouts and are reprinted with Ricki Carroll’s permission.

Thirty-Minute Mozzarella

Whey Ricotta and Whole Milk Ricotta

Originally published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, March 7, 2008.

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