Louella Hill's Mozzarella, Sour Cream & Farmers' Cheese
february 8, 2015

Today my son went to the San Francisco Milk Maid's Cheesemaking for Kids class at 18 Reasons. He is seven. Although he wasn't a particularly adventurous taster of unfamiliar cheeses, he learned about the cheesemaking process and came home with three types of cheese he'd made himself!

Louella Hill, otherwise known as the San Francisco Milk Maid, teaches all kinds of cheesemaking classes for adults, but is also especially good with kids.

In addition to tasting, mixing, stretching and getting all kinds of messy, she had each kid do an experiment using rennet, which is made of enzymes traditionally found in cow, sheep and goat stomachs. These enzymes cause milk to separate into curds and whey, and eventually become cheese (the rennet they used was a modern, vegetarian version).

After the experiment, she led them on an imaginary hike as a tribe of ancient people discovering cheese: they needed something to drink on the hike, maybe some milk? they needed something to store it in, how about an animal stomach? And like magic, they had a more convenient and longer lasting form of milk, before there were refrigerators or even plastic cartons.

We'll be enjoying the foods he made in class all week long. Follow these links to see my posts about them: mozzarella, sour cream and farmers' cheese. Starting tonight, pizza!