Before Christmas 2013 I went on a cheese making course at River Cottage (guess they are not doing it anymore as no link at this time). One of the types of cheese we made was Camembert which needed some TLC to mature from pasteurized but not homogenized milk product to a mature creamy cheese. Some starter and rennet produced a curds and whey substance that over the day we slowly changed to cheese. We then put the curds into a mold to hold our mould and milk ended up in a cheese. Keeping warm for the first day then cool for 10 days then in the fridge for 6 weeks ended up with this:
It looked like the real stuff, and did not smell too strong so I decided to try some:
It was really smooth and creamy and had a good taste, a bit acidic (think hint of lemon) but all in all it was very nice. I am not a cheese expert (kind of glad about that) but the end result was a reasonable attempt, and the rind was quite a result:
We used two+ litres of milk to produce two tuna tin size Camembert cheeses. It took all day to make, and then about 2 months of care and attention to mature… still not totally convinced it is worth the effort on a small scale. Unless you have a near free source of pasteurized, but not homogenised source of milk then it is a bit of graft. That is ok if you have nothing else to do, but the jury is still out if I will take it on in the long run.