Hare are my (current) favorite references and links related to cheese making.

Books:

There are a lot of great books on making cheese, but these two are the ones I rely on most heavily.

Home Cheese Making by Rikki Carroll

This is the book that I started with, and it’s a pretty good book for beginners. However, if you supplement it with the photo essays available at the companion website (see the New England Cheesmaking Supply Company link, below) – it’s an incredibly good introduction to home cheese making. The photos clear up several of the confusing points I ran into when reading the book alone.

Rikki Carroll is referred to as “the cheese queen”, and she deserves the title based on her pioneering work to promote home cheese making

American Farmstead Cheese by Paul Kindstedt

This is my go-to reference for cheese making. It gives a history of cheese making in America and describes the chemistry behind each step in the cheese making process. There’s a discussion of safety practices as well as the impact of variations in milk composition, cultures, and processing. He discusses variations in cheese recipes and methods of small scale production.

This is an amazing resource and it helped me identify things I was doing wrong as well as discover methods that improved the reliability of my results.

Suppliers:

New England Cheesemaking Supply Company (http://www.cheesemaking.com/) This site has been a pioneer in home cheese making and provides a lot of tutorial information. There’s also a store where you can buy individual ingredients, supplies, books, or starter kits. I got my start with Rikki Carroll’s book, and the photo tutorials on this site were critical to my getting through a lot of problem issues.

GetCulture.com (http://www.getculture.com/) I use this site for purchasing all of my cheese making “software” (cultures, rennet, yeasts, etc). I’ve also bought some of my “hardware” (mold forms, draining mats, cheesecloth, etc) here as well. This site focuses on the home hobbyist and is a separate branch of the commercial dairy supplier Dairy Connection.

Forums:

CheeseForum.org (http://www.cheeseforum.org/) This is where I went beyond the basics of following recipes and really began to explore cheesemaking. This site has expanded from being just a forum to include a database of recipes and a reference wiki for cheesemaking. But the forum is where you’ll get great guidance and find a community of both experienced and beginning hobbyists.

Recipes:

 You’ll find great recipes at the sites listed above. Here’ I’ll post the recipes that I’ve used and found to have worked (along with any handouts that I’ve developed).

Full Bloom Elf (Soft, White Mold Ripened, Triple Cream)