Milk Into Cheese: The Foundations of Natural Cheesemaking Using Traditional Concepts, Tools, and Techniques

With recipes for over 80 natural cheeses and complimentary ferments, this groundbreaking, comprehensive book guarantees high-quality results and perfect flavors for every season.

Cheese is milk’s destiny. In Milk Into Cheese, cheesemakers at every scale will learn to produce a broad range of traditional cheeses, entirely naturally. Experienced educator, activist, and celebrated natural cheesemaker David Asher introduces the reader to the cultures and practices of cheesemakers, the role our agricultural practices play in making cheese, the biological evolution of cheese, and the transformation of milk into cheese through fermentation.

A perfect companion to David’s The Art of Natural Cheesemaking, Milk Into Cheese expands the cheesemaker’s tool kit through an exploration of cheesemaking styles from around the world. These natural cheesemaking processes are made simple, in contrast to the complicated, controversial, and confusing world of industrial cheesemaking, with its reliance on freeze-dried cultures, chemical additives, and ever-expanding use of expensive technology.

Milk Into Cheese also celebrates the world’s most delicious seasonal hand-made cheeses, including alpine, blue, and milled cheeses. Through gorgeous photography, helpful illustrations, and detailed recipes, David prepares the reader for their own journey into traditional natural cheesemaking. He also shares simple recipes for fermented foods that complement and help us understand cheesemaking better, including pickles, sourdough bread, butter, and salami.

For home, small-scale, and larger-scale cheesemakers, Milk Into Cheese delivers a sophisticated look at the biological science that informs--and the ecological principles that guide--natural cheesemaking.

Praise for The Art of Natural Cheesemaking

＂The wisdom [Asher] shares is complex in nature, but satisfyingly simple in practice.＂

--Edible Manhattan

David Asher is a natural cheesemaker, bringing the traditions of dairying, fermentation, and coagulation back into this age-old craft. A former farmer and goatherd from the west coast of Canada, David now travels widely, sharing a very old but also very new approach to cheese production with his Black Sheep School of Cheesemaking. Through teaching about the use of in-house starter cultures and natural rennet from calves and kids, David helps cheesemakers around the world reclaim their traditional cheeses. He also explores the connections between all fermented foods and the important role of small-scale and traditional food production in our modern world.