A delicious evening was enjoyed by Dilton Marsh WI members during an evening of cheese and wine.
Guest speaker, Janet Brown, brought along a vast selection of cheeses to illustrate her talk on cheese making. A library of her slides illustrated this fascinating and sometimes amusing talk.
An expert in this field, acting as judge at various competitions, Janet was employed within the industry from 1962 to 2002, having gained a diploma in dairying after leaving school. In the beginning it was Cheddar cheese which mostly occupied local factories, but this soon grew as food industries and their customers became more adventurous.
Although the principles of cheese making is the same, there are varying methods needed for hard and soft cheese. Also, varying milks needed for the types such as cows, sheep and goat.
The basic steps are adding culture or living bacteria to warm milk to turn it into lactic acid; then adding a coagulant such as rennet which causes the proteins in milk to link together to transform the liquid into a gel. The curd is then cut down into smaller pieces, the sizes of which will determine the amount of moisture in the final cheese. The curds are then stirred in the vat while the acid will be continuing to develop. Washing is the process of removing some of the whey, which creates a milder, sweeter cheese and then the curds are separated from the whey and salt added. Every cheese has an identification number for health and safety reasons, each one can be traced back to their source.
Following the talk, members enjoyed tasting the rich assortment with a glass of wine and gave Janet a well-deserved round of applause.
Founder member Pam Jones was presented with flowers to celebrate her 80th birthday.
Next month’s meeting is ‘Frome Hoard’ with speaker Dave Crisp.
Liz Lee
