Bookham Cheese

This cheese is a cross between Cheddar and Parmesan. We use only the morning milk from a single herd of grass fed cows. This full cream, non pasteurised milk results in a cheese which is very creamy and full bodied. In keeping with our tradition of producing something different for your cheese board, we will be presenting this cheese in 200g cubes, which we believe is a first for the cheese industry. The retail boxes are now available and will make great Christmas gifts.

 We have taken a few photos of the production, to show you how this cheese is made.

The first photo shows you the arrival of our finishing table, after much head scratching and with only inches to spare we did manage to get it into position.

The second photo shows the milk arriving at Twineham. This purpose built milk tanker has been purchased by R. Harrison and Sons and is towed behind their JCB Fast Trac. The morning milk is placed directly into this tanker and the starter culture is added at their farm, then it is transported directly to Twineham

Once in the vat, the vegetarian rennet is added and the milk coagulates

The curds are cut into small pieces and then cooked

After cooking the whey and curds are transfered onto our finishing table

The whey is then drained off to our ricotta vats, the ricotta we make currently goes into our ravioli, but we do have plans to offer this in a retail form

Once the whey has been drained the curds are checked regularly until the correct level of pH has been reached, at which point we add salt and then place the curds in to moulds.

These moulds are then placed into a press and the curds are squeezed together for 2 days.

The cheeses are then left to mature for 9 months prior to being placed in their lovely black boxes and are now ready for sale.