LOAF CHEESE

Waipa Post, Volume XXIV, Issue 1681, 3 November 1925, Page 6

LOAF CHEESE

♦ OR "PREPARED" CHEESE. Several readers have asked us for information on the loaf cheese, and as the question is one of general interest we shall give the following details for the henefit of our readers:— The loaf cheese is a prepared cheese made by cutting Cheddar Swiss cheese into small shavings or lumps, and then heating the*same to about 160 degrees F. in motion for about 15 minutes. This is done in copper kettles about three feet in diameter, containing a stirring apparatus. The process could easily be imitated on a small experimental scale by heat-

ing the cheese in a metal ice cream freezer. This was the method first used. The cheese must not be ground; it must merely be cut into small pieces or shavings, for if it is ground the butter-fat will separate from the casein. Various grades and ages of cheese are mixed together so as to always obtain the same taste in the cheese, and sometimes a little cheese colour is mixed into the cheese to make it more deep in colour than the natural cheese and of a uniform colour. There are a number of patents existing on the manufacture of loaf cheese. One of these is relative to the addition of tri-sodium phosphate, which is supposed to make a smoother product and neutralise cheese which is too acid.

When the cheese is heated to 160 degrees Fahrenheit it requires a consistency exactly like Welsh rarebit, at which time it is poured into forms containing tinfoil or parchment paper and the package sealed immediately. Another very good method for making loaf cheese is to make a large square 25 or 501 b cheese, which is cut into 51b oblong loaves immediately after pressing. These are then put into an electrically-heated form, similar to a waffle iron, which singes the outside and makes a sterilised rind." This is then immediately packed into parchment or tinfoil, and the cheese allowed to ripen in cold storage, or at least down to 50 degrees F., inside the package. This gives a cheese which is

more natural in appearance than the ordinary loaf cheese, but it is doubtful whether the ripening is as good as that which takes place in the whole cheese. The loaf cheese will keep for a considerable time without going dry, and without undue ripeness developing.