Make great cheese, no cow needed
Wow your guests with simple paneer and vegan cheeses.
As a person who is big into doit-yourself, I’ve long been interested in making my own cheese. Not that I would ever be able to produce something to rival a professional cheesemaker, but just so I could understand the process and maybe make something simple but delicious.
I’ve also long been curious about vegan “cheese.” Pure Abundance in Atlanta produces a cultured and aged cashew cheese. Melanie Wade of Cultured South took over production of Pure Abundance in June 2017, and I talked with her about how that’s been going.
Wade began working in the world of fermented and cultured food when she created Golda Kombucha in 2013. When she opened her kombucha taproom and fermentation marketplace this year she was ready to take on cheese.
“It seems like a simple process,” she said, “but it’s not. Vegan cheese is based on nuts, and nuts can be different. Some can be drier, some can be richer. That’s fine if you’re just making cheese at home, but we need to make a product that consistently meets our quality standards.”
Another piece of the puzzle was rejuvelac, the probiotic-rich nonalcoholic fermented liquid that’s used to culture nuts and seeds to so they can give the cheese a tangy flavor. Wade and her cheese makers were having trouble with the rejuvelac formula they inherited.
She said, “It wasn’t buttery and creamy. It was making a sour cheese. It dawned on me, there