A vegan diet is something that is often considered these days. But still, the fact that no cheese can be eaten makes you feel like something is missing.

online workshop vegan cheese

Just no animal milk?

Fortunately, vegan cheese is gaining popularity. As with other vegan dishes, we would simply replace cow’s milk with vegetable milk, but making vegan cheese is a different story.

But what exactly goes into such a vegan cheese? Cashews, a source of lactic acid and a mold, and salt are the minimum. Handy are real vegan cheese cultures, candidum for extra flavor, Leuconostoc for the cheesiness, and transglutaminase to make it firm. Ok, but how do I make it?

We’ll focus on the camembert, the popular white mold cheese. 

The basics

You will need

  • a food processor
  • a cool ripening spot between 10 and 13 degrees (easier during autumn)
  • a sealable plastic container
  • a clean handkerchief
  • a sushi mat
  • aluminum foil
  • chlorine for cleaning.
  • (Using a cheese mould to give it a really nice form makes it even better).

The ingredients

First of all, your vegan ‘milk’. In terms of nutritional value, soy milk, almond milk, and oat milk score best. Rice milk scores worst, with few vitamins and minerals and a relatively high number of calories and sugars. In terms of protein, soy milk is head and shoulders above the other vegetable kinds of ‘milk’.

Camembert starter kit

But we have an even better option for making vegan cheese: cashew. Cashew nuts are extremely popular among vegan cheeses since they are not very expensive, and contain plenty of proteins, carbs, and fats, which gives them a mild flavor and creamy texture. This is why we too prefer them as the main ingredient to make plant-based cheese.

After making your cashew milk/ paste you can add some 10% coconut oil to make it a bit fattier.

 

 

 

Using real cheese cultures

But what we must add now to this paste are the microorganisms because we will start the fermentation, with a real cheese culture. There are two types, primary and secondary cultures. Primary cultures will acidify your cheese. The acidity prevents the cheese from going bad. I use a ‘vegan starter I’, and vegan Leuconostoc for extra cheese flavor and aroma.

To make our specific camembert cheese we use the vegan cultures Penicillium camemberti and the G.candidum mold. These are the secondary cultures. These will make your cheese very, very similar to the original camembert. And the secret ingredient: transglutaminase, a (vegan) binding enzyme that glues proteins. It is also used for vegan burgers as it glues to proteins from the beans, and we will use it (just 1%) to make our vegan cheese very consistent. You can easily get all these ingredients on startercultures.eu, the European webshop for home fermentation hobbyists.

The steps of making vegan cheese

  1. Work clean, or your white cheese will turn blue, or worse, e.g. black and green. We’ll use a bucket with water and some chlorine and disinfect everything we use in that bucket, from beginning to end. Beware that chlorine kills the cultures as well!
  2. Grind the cashews, with the optional coconut oil, cultures and transglutaminase to a very fine paste. 
  3. Cover the mould with a handkerchief or cheeseclot and out the paste in the mould and let the fermentation start. The cultures will feed on the sugar in the cashews, break it down and form acids and such. That will take 12-24 hours.  Roomtemperature is fine, but temperatures up to 32°C (90°F) will speed up the process. After around 24 hours, the cheese will also have firmed up
  4. Next step: salting. Remove from the mould, remove the cloth and weigh the cheese.  Sprinkle 2 % by weight salt all around the cheese.
  5. The secondary fermentation is for ripening the cheese- right now it just tastes like sour cashews. Flavor takes time. Any cold, fresh place of around 10- 12 C degrees is perfect. We will also need high humidity to keep the cheese from drying out; basically, we want the mold to grow in autumn-like conditions. And we want the mold to grow easily all around. By using a cheese mat oxygen is able to reach all sides. You need to rotate every day.
  6. Final step is to wrap the cheese and let it cure in the refrigerator. No more fermentation, the pH starts rising and the cheese is curing. This takes time, the cheese gets softer and starts to smell. After around 2 weeks your cheese will be readyDelicious!

“Serve your friends while you mumble ‘Le camembert, ce fromage qui fleure les pieds du bon Dieu’ and watch them being amazed by this excellent, yet vegan, camembert.”
– YT

In conclusion

Vegan cheeses have come a long way in terms of taste and texture in recent years. While some vegan cheeses may not taste exactly like traditional dairy cheese, many people find them to be a tasty and satisfying alternative. Whether you’re curious about trying vegan cheese or protecting animal life, these next-generation vegan camembert cheeses are awesome. Give them a try!

Want to know more?

If you want to know more about making your own vegan cheese, or just order it, please click the links below for the product on startercultures.eu