Artisan Cheese Making at Home: Techniques & Recipes for Mastering World-Class Cheeses [A Cookbook]

I would consider myself an advancing novice cheese maker in that I have been making cheese for many years now, have made many different types of cheese several times (including more difficult ones), yet I feel I have a lot to learn yet before joining the elite ranks of advanced cheese makers. When I bought this book, I was under the asumption that it was targeted toward a beginner cheese maker. I have read all of the introductory material and glanced through nearly all recipes. Please consider my review from this perspective. First thing I will say is that I love this book! I feel it is very well done and hosts some great cheese pictures (Always a huge plus for me)! I knew it was going to be well worth it when I saw that Peter Reinhart (Author of "The Bread Baker's Apprentice", my favorite bread book) wrote the forward. I feel that the instruction is clear and this author has done a great job of thinking about the weird little "common sense" things which tend to get left out of cheese making books. Stuff like recommending that you sanitize you equipment in bleach then dry on a rack on top of a cookie sheet before starting your cheese making session. To some this may be assumed, but if you have never worked food service- proper sanitation may not be second nature to you. Another thing I really appreciate is the author's presentation of equipment and ingredients. All items are explained in good detail. I was very impressed with the fact that she included a chart with many of the most common cheese starter cultures, what they are used for, and which vendors carry them. I will be photo copying this chart and laminating it to keep with my equipment (big +1 there!). The pictures, as I mentioned, are very nice. Now, the recipes. There are a handful of books out there with more cheese recipes than there are in this one. However, this author seems to have gone for depth instead of breadth. That is to say that the recipes chosen (which does not comprise a small list by any means) are very interesting and compelling to try (I cant wait to make the saffron infused manchego!!). In the spirit of this being a learning book, the author has chosen to organize recipes by level of advancement. Simple cheeses such as paneer come first while more challenging ones such as cheddar appear later. I personally really like this in a beginning cheese making book. So in summary, I strongly recommend this book to those new to cheese making. I think this book is very well done. The greatest strength of this book is undoubtedly the organization of the material, the pictures are a nice bonus. This book will now be my standard recommended Beginner-Intermediate book.

I would suggest this book as your second cheese making book. Get Ricki Carolls book first. http://www.amazon.com/Home-Cheese-Making-Recipes-Homemade/dp/1580174647/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1359509744&sr=8-1&keywords=ricki+carroll.. Home Cheese Making is the primer where you can begin to learn how cheese works. This was the best book for fundementals for me. She really takes a lot of time to teach you how to make some pretty good cheese. And if pretty good cheese is what you are after you could stop with this book. But if you are really trying to get to the next level Artisn Cheese Making at Home is the book for you. Artisan Cheesemaking at Home is a book of nuance, that may not be appreciated until you have been making cheese for a while. While other books tell you to add starter culture this book gets you into the varieties of starter cultures and how much they can influence the flavor and quality of your cheese. It has recipes for some very difficult cheeses that will challenge you and if you can make them give you a feeling of satisfaction that is hard to describe. In addition to recipes she gives you the basics to begin to experiment with developing your own cheese. If you have been making cheese for a while you know that each cheese no matter what recipe you use is its own cheese. That is the beauty of home made artisan cheese. You can never make the same one twice. Too many variables influence the outcome. She gets you to understand that and encourages you to take some chances with your own ideas. This is just a great book for anyone who wants to become a better cheese maker.

I really like this book. It is informative, has clear instructions and lots of recipes, from simple to advanced.

Love the 'home' scaled portions and recipes, and the logical progression of 'easy to difficult' methods. This book could use an expanded list of sources for product and supplies, but does give logical substitutions for materials needed to get started. I found some of the 'difficult' cheezes much easier to produce than some of the hard, pressed, aged types, so makers shouldn't be put off by the format, and try any recipe they choose. Great food library book, and should be part of any serious cook/chefs reference material.

Let me preface this by saying that I am a professional chef, and have made several cheeses/cultured dairy products in the past, but wanted to learn more about the subject and expand my repertoire. This is the first cheese making book I have ever owned. I didn't want to go into this with the idea that I already knew what was going on, so I started at the beginning and have been working my way toward the more complex cheeses. Each cheese I have made following the directions exactly, have turned out wonderfully! Every time I make a cheese I am excited to make the next more difficult one on my list. This book does a great job of laying out exactly what you need to successfully execute each recipe. It doesn't shortcut on the information or descriptions which more advanced cheese makers may consider to be obvious, but it doesn't spend so long on the "obvious" subjects that it becomes lecturing or condescending. All in all, a great book, with a plethora of recipes, and enough information that none of them seem impossible. One of the best cook books I have ever owned.

This was a gift for my mother who is a shepherd and makes her own cheeses. She loved the book because it has a huge variety of cheese recipes, and some that she has never heard of, which is what I was hoping! She has many books on cheese making and this is the most beautiful and interesting to look at. It has the largest variety of cheese recipes than any of the books in her collection. However, the recipes call for pasteurized milk, (which most people use exclusively!). Since she has UNPASTEURIZED milk from sheep, goats, and cows, and is not sure if she can use this milk in these recipes, she has yet to make anything from it. We plan to write the author to ask if we can use unpasteurized milk. Her other complaint is that there are too many referrals to a web site instead of having that information in the book itself. Why print a book if you are going to leave out information and tell readers to look it up on a website? These days in magazines there are often references that direct readers to websites and that practice is now spilling over in to books. She does not use a computer and is not happy about this practice in the books she reads! This may not mean anything to the rest of the world who are all using computers! She says, if you are into making cheese, this might be the only book you need! Get it!

Cheese making books aren't hard to find and while I've read many of them, Artisan Cheese Making at Home was the first one I was inspired to purchase. Not only does the book contain easy-to-follow instructions for as many different types of cheeses to make as virtually any other book out there, it is by far the most beautiful of the bunch. Rarely is a book as artistic as it is utilitarian, so not only can one see what most of the finished cheese products should look like, they are inspired to want to produce something that has the potential to look as grand. Looking over not only the recipes for making artisan cheeses but also the recipes for what to do with all those cheeses once they are made, Mary Karlin is obviously a chef, a foodie, an epicurean, and a gourmet of the highest level. I have already easily made quite a number of batches of cheese with the help of her sage advice, and really look forward to producing my first bloomy blue cheese chevre log and buttermilk blue cheese that looks as delicious as the finest Roquefort I've ever eaten. This review has been submitted by Allen Deever, author of Writers’ Conference in a Book: Top Ten Truths of Writing Better, Faster, Easier and More Profitably. http://www.amazon.com/Writers-Conference-Book-Writing-Profitably/dp/1511766913

This book has useful information for the intermediate home cheese maker: a brine chart with water to salt percentages, trouble shooting, a culture chart, information on coagulants, calcium chloride, lipase powder, Annatto, recipes for cheese, recipes for using your cheese and other helpful bits. The book does have many nice pictures, but there isn’t a picture for each recipe or method. This book has helped me take my beginner cheese making skills to the next level. Pictured is finished pressed “Asiago Pepato” ready for a saturated salt brine.

Nice start to known how to make good cheese and start a journey in new experiments with enough confidence. Very clear and direct text. Reasonable technical information that keep interesting reading without being boring.

I love this book! Perfect for home and work! I Suggested to everyone who want to start home making cheese!!

I found this book after a couple of false starts trying to find a book which had enough detail about both the process of making cheese and some of the basic science of what was happening. This book filled that gap perfectly. Lots of information, lots of detailed recipes and helpful troubleshooting advice when things don't turn out as you planned. I have already made some of the cheeses and plan to try many more, a really great resource. Its also a beautiful book with detailed pictures of how some of the hand made cheeses should turn out. If you are really interested in making cheese at home this is the book you need.

Sin duda el mejor libro de hacer quesos que he comprado. Bien explicado, por niveles de dificultad, muchas recetas, sencillo de entender, metodico y buenas fotos. Bien

This book covers exactly what I wanted to know about cheese. As a foodie, I wanted to have the bases to make cheese, and also have a good book that would allow to expand my repertoire without resorting to buying a more advanced manual shortly after this one. I was pleased by the airiness of the book, the inspiring and beautiful pictures, and the selection and variety of recipes included. I likes the charts explaining different cultures, and that many processes are illustrated. They start slow with young cheeses, but they also explore cultured butter, yogurt or crème fraîche. Even if those are not cheeses, they use the same ingredients are are related to cheese and I really enjoyed to learn those were easily accessible. When you become more experimented, you can switch to the next chapter, which are intermediate cheeses, exploring stretched-curd, semisoft, firm and hard cheeses. Then after, they get to bloomy-rind and surface-rippened cheeses, washed-rind, smeared-rind and blue cheeses. You will have nothing to envy all those artisan cheese shops, at a much more affordable price, with a bonus of being proud of your achievement. There is a little something for everyone in this book, and they really make everything look easy and manageable. The last chapter covers cooking with cheese. It's kind of short, but there are some classics and some more inventive combos, including some frozen desserts, which I found interesting. Bonus for having a good cheese fondue reference, since most people are lazy and get the packets. Nothing like a really homemade cheese pot !