Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

EDIT: To reflect the failures of every HARD and/or AGED CHEESE WE TRIED in this book. I really can't understand the reviewers which criticized this book for assuming the use of RAW MILK, because the title of the book is: "The Art of Natural Cheesemaking: Using Traditional, Non-Industrial Methods and Raw Ingredients to Make the World's Best Cheeses." It does include a few very worthwhile cheeses that can be made using pasteurized homogenized store bought milk, and for these alone I think this book is worthwhile, but it really shines for anyone who keeps dairy animals and therefore has a source of clean, fresh raw milk (and often more than they know what to do with). Our raw milk tastes good for weeks, and sometimes we start making cheese within 15 minutes of it leaving the cow. So our milk is impeccably clean and fresh. The first problem with this book began when we tried to locate Kefir. Cultures For Health's dried kefir never really came alive, and cost over $20. When we used to it culture anything, it ended up tasting rank and nasty. We tried live liquid culture Kefir from "the Kefir Lady." This too never really had any vigor, and resulted in everything tasting rank and chalky. Finally, we located a local source of fresh raw kefir, and boy this stuff was strong. Works very well, and cultures up whatever nicely. The problem is that it still tastes rank. I think Kefir doesn't taste very good because many of the organisms in it impart bad flavors. There is a reason, I think, why yogurt and cultured buttermilk and most cheeses use just one or two different cultures that are PURE and produce a good tasting product. With Kefir, you don't know what you are getting, and that is a problem of Asher's methods. Basically Asher's method is to use Kefir for everything and applied different manipulations to the cheese (more or less rennet, different shapes and sizes, different washes and salt and exterior treatments, etc.) in order to alter its flavor. Besides his recipes for paneer, mozzarella (both slow and fast), and yougurt cheese, all of his other cheeses taste to me basically the same, and every one of them after a few weeks develops weird molds that we have no idea if they are safe to eat. This includes his St. Marcellin, Camambert, Tomme, and Gouda, all of which we followed his recipe and methods painstakingly (even using Walco-ren rennet), bought a refrigerator and hacked it to make a cheese cave, and made clean wooden boards and bamboo mats to age with. Every one of these cheeses once aged about 3 weeks started to grow something weird. As the man of the house (and not being pregnant), I tasted every one of them, and didn't get sick, but the cheese tastes inferior to anything I've ever bought in a store. We have some in that cave aging, but we are not very hopeful. A whole rainbow of weird molds is growing, and we wash them off with whey or brine or whatever is prescribed. Things like this absolutely kill enthusiasm for such endeavors, and I think do more harm to at-home-cheesmaking than any "industrial cheesemaking book" every has. There is basically no troubleshooting section in the book to speak of. No guidance on how to get good kefir (or milk). No instruction hardly on how to treat aging cheese...he sort of assumes evetything is going to work. I am beginning to think that the people that gave this book props did so because IT IS compellingly written and seems to makes sense. The problem is that it just doesn't seem to work with enough reliability that a normal person is willing to INVEST the considerable amount of time it takes to make a hard cheese for it not to turn out well consistently and predictably. We have turned to using prepared cultures and a more sterile (laboratory-like technique) because it is not worth the time investment and the amount of dishwashing to make a cheese that may turn out poorly. It's worth it, in our mind, to use prepared cultures that will produce a pleasing and predicable tasting cheese!