Cheese! Cheese! Cheese! ... So Cheesy ! How do they do it?

Hello everyone, I am Nikitha - A final year MBA student from Amrita School Of Business majoring in Operations and Marketing. I am back with my blog and this time I am going to enlighten you with something mouth-watering! Yes, In the next few paragraphs I am going to explain about CHEESE and how is it made. 

Cheese is a fermented food derived from the milk of various mammals. Since humans began to domesticate milk-producing animals around 10,000 B.C. , they have known about the propensity of milk to separate into curds and whey. It is the curds that are used to make cheese, and practically every culture on Earth has developed its own methods, the only major exceptions being China and the ancient Americas.

The first cheeses were "fresh," that is, not fermented, similar to today's cottage cheese aka Paneer. By A.D. 100 cheese makers in various countries knew how to press, ripen, and cure fresh cheeses, thereby creating a product that could be stored for long periods. Each country or region developed different types of cheese that reflected local ingredients and conditions. The number of cheeses thus developed is staggering. France, famous for the quality and variety of its cheeses, is home to about 400 commercially available cheeses.

                                         

The manufacturing Process:

The picture above gives a complete image of how cheese reaches your plate, Cheese manufacturing is a straightforward yet nuanced process. Larger cheesemaking factories have automated production lines, which yield mostly uniform results. In contrast, small batch cheesemakers or even those making cheeses in the comfort of their own homes may find that cheese can vary batch by batch depending on the conditions under which it’s made.

The first step in the manufacturing process is preparing the milk. It takes 10 pounds of milk to make one pound of cheese. Small batch cheesemakers typically use unpasteurized milk, which includes the bacteria needed to produce lactic acid (the agent that makes the cheese curdle). Larger factories use pasteurized milk and then add the bacteria separately.

Once the milk is prepared, rennet is added to it to separate the curds and whey. The curds can be cut using knives and then drained and pressed into molds. After the curds have been prepared, they are ready for aging (though some soft cheeses, like cottage cheese, don’t need to be aged). The length of the aging process varies, depending on the variety of cheese. The cheese might be bathed in brine to stimulate the growth of mold or rind and then stored in a room at the proper temperature and humidity. Some cheeses might be aged for only a month, while others — like extra sharp cheddar — might be set aside to age for up to two years.

Quality Control :

In the factory, quality control is ensured by rigorous inspectors who test the cheese for a variety of factors like texture, body, smell, and taste — and then assign points based on these characteristics.

Cheese manufacturing presents some unique challenges, particularly because of the debate surrounding pasteurized and unpasteurized milk. To ensure the health of consumers, the FDA requires that many cheeses be made from pasteurized milk, but it does allow producers to use unpasteurized milk as long as those cheeses will be aged for more than 60 days. Cheese lovers argue that since pasteurization destroys the natural bacteria needed to manufacture cheese, making cheese with pasteurized milk results in an inferior product. Ultimately, this can make things complicated when it comes to the import and export of cheese, as different countries have different regulations surrounding pasteurization.

Despite the ongoing debate surrounding pasteurization, there seem to be no sign of the cheese supply chain slowing down. Americans can rest assured that they’re very much on track to reach (if not surpass!) the predicted 37 pounds per capita consumption rate by 2025.