The New Rules of Cheese by Anne Saxelby

Author:Anne Saxelby [Saxelby, Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Potter/Ten Speed/Harmony/Rodale
Published: 2020-10-20T00:00:00+00:00

RULE 31

Oh baby, I like it raw (milk, that is…).

In the immortal words of rapper Ol’ Dirty Bastard, when it comes to milk, oh baby, I like it raw! Over the past hundred years or so, raw milk has gotten a bad reputation. In public discourse, most mainstream American consumers would likely avoid raw milk—citing concerns for health and safety. Raw milk is something that most people speak about in hushed tones, akin to contraband or black-market goods. Indeed, as one cheesemaker I know put it only half-jokingly, the substance most closely monitored by law enforcement in his home state is narcotics, followed by milk. For a brief time in history and in certain places (i.e., post–industrial revolution urban centers), that bad rep might have been deserved due to unscrupulous production methods, but for millennia raw milk was the only milk around. Humanity’s collective relationship with raw milk is something worth defending and savoring. It’s not called the “perfect food” for nothing!

As my good friend Mateo Kehler, cofounder of Jasper Hill Farm, says, “Raw milk is the sum of practices on the farm.” Feed, bedding, cleanliness in the barn, herd management, and animal health all play a vital role in the microbiological balance of raw milk. Mateo has also been known to say that “pasteurization is an apology”…for the lack of good practices on a farm. You can slice and dice this issue a lot of different ways, but at the end of the day, raw milk that comes from healthy animals and is produced under sanitary conditions is not only tastier, but also undoubtedly better for cheesemaking and for the human body to digest. As we continue to find with matters regarding Mother Nature—whether the debate is agriculture, processed food, or climate change—the more you mess with the natural balance of systems, the less wholesome it is—for your body or for the planet.

So, what is “raw milk” anyway? Raw milk is milk that never gets heated much above a cow’s body temperature. Raw milk is its own ecosystem, a complex suspension of fats, proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals, and, yes, microbes. Microbes that, if the milk comes from a healthy animal milked under sanitary conditions, are the building blocks for flavor in a finished wheel of cheese (see “Microbes are our friends,” this page). It is also argued that nutrients in raw milk, because they have not been altered by pasteurization or homogenization (see sidebar below), are more readily absorbed by our bodies, and that raw milk is easier to digest. During the cheesemaking process, raw milk can be gently heated to between 100° and 110°F, but it is never subjected to the punishing (and microbe-neutralizing) heat of pasteurization.

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