Making your fresh cheese and butter is an easy way to start a project that would require whey, or, buttermilk to complete. The flatbreads that I made for the Harvest Day "Viking" lunch needed whey or buttermilk to create.
Making your cheese and butter is cost-effective as well, especially when feast planning, and is one of the tricks I used to stay within a tight budget. A gallon of milk is less costly than a pound of butter, or, a pint of ricotta.
Fresh cheese should be served at the beginning of the meal. This is based on the dietetics of the time, which likens the stomach to an oven, where the opening of the stomach in preparation for continuing to "cook" what you eat and keep you healthy begins with those things that are light, easily digestible, sugared, spiced, or oil and vinegared. This creates room in the budget to serve ripened cheese at the end of a meal of meat, or nuts, after a meal of fish or both as you choose. Diners are full and will eat less of the ripe more expensive cheese at the end of the meal. To be quite frank, I only plan about 2 ounces of ripe cheese at the end of a meal per table, which works out to a pound of cheese for eight tables. I do also plan two to three different cheeses cut into bite-sized pieces as well. Yes, it's a trick I use and nobody has complained (yet) that there wasn't enough cheese.
To learn more about the very basics of dietetics and how a modern cook can plan a meal around them, check out the Medieval Cooking Basics Class How to Arrange the Feast; The Application of Medieval Dietary Theory to Modern Day Feasts.
There is tons of available different recipes on how to make your own cheese and butter available through google. This is how I do it
"Fresh Cheese"
1 Gallon of Milk makes approximately 1 1/2 to 2 cups of cheese
Ingredients
4 cups whole milk + 1/2 cup heavy whipping cream (I prefer grass-fed organic milk or Fairlife whole milk, they produce the best flavor and curds)
Juice of a lemon (you can substitute vinegar)
Pinch of salt
Instructions
Mix milk and cream together and place into a pot on the stove.
Heat until just below boiling. You will see steam rising from the milk and tiny bubbles forming all along the edge of the pot. Turn off the heat at this point
Squeeze in lemon juice, and add a pinch of salt. Allow setting on the stovetop until room temperature. The milk will curdle up and continue to curdle while it cools.
Strain off the whey by pouring the cheese into a cloth-lined strainer. Allow it to continue to drip for several hours or overnight depending on how firm you would like your cheese to be.
Add favorite add-ins and serve, or serve plain
NOTE: If you plan to bake the cheese, you will want a much dryer curd, you can add cream to it if it is too dry, but you can't take away too much moisture and nobody wants a soggy pie. If you want to serve the cheese as a "cream" cheese, leave it a little moister and blend in a blender.
"To Make Butter"
2 cups of heavy cream make approximately 1 cup of butter
Somewhere out there a real chef or old-time homesteader is probably going to gasp in horror at what I am about to disclose. This was a happy mistake on my part.
Ingredients
Heavy Whipping Cream
Pinch of Salt
Instructions
Pour heavy whipping cream into a blender and add the pinch of salt, with the idea that you are going to make whipped cream.
Pulse a few times, then set on "blend" and walk away for a few minutes to fold the laundry.
Lose track of time (ten minutes or so) and return too late to save the whipped cream, and voila, you have butter. What??
Remove butter from the blender, save what is left of the butter milk, curse the fates, and then press onward----
Using ice water to firm the butter and clean it. Using the back of a spoon or spatula press the water into the butter and rinse it a few times until the water runs clear. Pat or press the butter into shape, and store it to serve later.
Note: It is THAT easy. You can serve the butter right away if you wish without cleaning it, which will result in a very creamy spread. I prefer to clean the whey(?) out so that the butter lasts longer. One difference you will note right away, it is not yellow, it will be white. You can color it if you wish to serve it in a more familiar way. I choose not to.
The liquid that is strained off is a kind of "butter-milk" and you can drink it but it is much better if used right away to bake. If you need fermented buttermilk for baking, mix one part of the strained liquid with three parts of milk and allow to set overnight. Voila!
