The wonder of Shropshire cheese

Take an amount of raw cows’ milk – it could be sheep's or goats’ – warm it to around 30C and allow time for wild bacteria naturally present in the milk to ferment lactose, the milk sugar, to lactic acid.

Add a small quantity of the enzyme rennet and wait as it creates a cheese curd. Gently break up the curd to release cheese whey which is removed, so concentrating the curd and trapping milk-fat and moisture. Add salt to the curd to stop the bacteria from producing too much acid. Shape the curd into a cheese and mature before eating. This is the essence of cheese making.

Cheese is an ancient and remarkable foodstuff. It delights many consumers and especially cheese connoisseurs, or turophiles.

Its history goes back some 6,000 years as dated to the late Bronze Age, Urnfield culture of Neuchatel in Switzerland, and the description above articulates more or less how cheese would have been made by our ancestors.

Although the roots of cheese making are in Europe, cheese is now made in many countries world-wide.

Nobody is quite sure how many cheese types there are, but Patrick Rance, author of The French Cheese Book, published in 1989, estimated that France alone produces some 700.

Perhaps surprisingly, 30 years on, Britain also produces around 700 different cheeses, significantly due to the activities of the Specialist Cheesemakers’ Association supporting the development of the artisan cheese sector.

Modern cheese-making methods echo the outline above, but cheese-makers are adept at modifying the basics in order to innovate and produce many different varieties.

So, cheddar manufacture today is often based on the fermentation or ripening of pasteurised milk with specially selected starter bacteria – lactic acid bacteria doing the same job as wild bacteria – and often using a non-animal rennet of fungal origin in order to yield a vegetarian cheese.

Pasteurisation – a controlled heat treatment – is used to kill bacterial pathogens which may be present in raw milk, but this is not to say that unpasteurised cheeses are inherently unsafe. Indeed, many outstanding unpasteurised cheddars, among other raw-milk cheeses, are found in the marketplace.

Following pasteurisation the ripening of milk in cheddar production occurs at around 29C, close to the optimum temperature for maximum bacterial growth, and usually takes some 40-50 minutes. Rennet is then added to work its magic and precipitate casein, the major milk protein.

Cheese curd forms over some 30-40 minutes and is then cut into small cubes, releasing whey.

Raising the curd temperature to around 39°C – known as scalding – causes the curd particles to shrink, expelling more whey.

As the particles knit together the curd is worked and when the required acidity is reached salt is added.

The curd is then pressed into moulds to form the desired cheese shape, and either bound in a cheese cloth (traditionally muslin) or vacuum packed in plastic bags for maturing.

Mild cheddar is sold at three months while mature cheddar may be 18-24 months old, or even older.

Cheddar is a hard cheese with a clean, lactic flavour produced by bacteria that only give lactic acid. Some cheeses are made with different starter organisms.

Swiss Emmental, for example, uses bacteria which give characteristically rich flavours and ‘eye holes’ created by carbon dioxide trapped as the cheese matures.

Other cheeses such as Stilton and Camembert are made with bacterial starters and fungi (also termed moulds).

Stilton’s blue veins are indeed a fungus with the exotic Latin name Penicillium roqueforti, which is added to the cheese curd. During maturation Stilton cheeses are pierced with stainless steel wires to let in air causing the fungus to bloom.

Similarly, the fungus Penicillium camemberti creates the white coat of Camembert.

By contrast with starter bacteria, fungi used in cheese making are biochemically very active and release enzymes which readily break down milk proteins and milk-fat.

This is why Camembert matures rapidly, becomes runny and develops delicious flavours and textures. Though, consequently, it has only a narrow window of acceptability compared with Cheddar.

Shropshire boasts many cheese businesses making wonderful products.

This article must not pass without mentioning Belton Farm at Whitchurch, an impressive Shropshire cheese business noted for the excellence of its English territorial cheeses, such as Cheddar, Cheshire, Lancashire, Double Gloucester and Caerphilly, as well as the delicious Red Fox, a relatively new innovation.

As residents of Shropshire we should raise our hats to Belton Farm’s cheese-makers, because it’s pleasing to report that their traditional, coloured Cheshire cheese was awarded Supreme Champion at the 2018 International Cheese and Dairy Awards, held in July just outside the Cheshire market town of Nantwich.

This was a remarkable achievement with a remarkable cheese, given that the competition received 5,183 entries in total, diligently evaluated by 300 judges, including myself.