🔄 Pressing
Squeezing whey out of the cheese curd.
Pressing means squeezing whey out of the cheese curd. After the milk curdles and the curd is cut, you get cheese grains floating in whey. The whey is drained: the first draining removes 30–50% of the volume. The grains are put into moulds, and pressing begins.
The moulds let liquid through, and under pressure the grains knit together into one wheel. The pressure is raised gradually, in 3–10 steps. The pressure on the cheese surface ranges from 50 to 450 grams per square centimetre, depending on the type of cheese. The harder the pressing, the firmer the cheese. Some soft cheeses are not pressed at all: they are simply left to drain, salted and packed.
After pressing, the cheese is salted — with dry salt or in brine. Salt draws out a bit more moisture, makes the cheese firmer and helps it keep. Cheese usually has 0.5–2% salt, and brined cheeses like feta have 3–7%. Then the wheels go off to ripen. Cheddar, Gouda and Monterey Jack, for example, count as pressed cheeses.
How it connects to milk
🔄 Pressing → kind of → 🏭 Milk processing at the dairy plant → kind of → 🥛 Milk
Links
- Previous step
- 🔄 Curdling
- Next step
- 🔄 Ripening
- What it yields
- 🧀 Monterey Jack, 🧀 Cheddar, 🧀 Pecorino Siciliano, 🧀 Pecorino Sardo, 🧀 Semi-hard cheeses, 🧀 Pecorino Toscano, 🧀 Salers, 🧀 San Simón da Costa, 🧀 Silter, 🧀 Stelvio, 🧀 Tome des Bauges, 🧀 Tomme de Savoie
- Part of
- 🏭 Milk processing at the dairy plant
- Wine and milk
- 🍷 Pressing (wine)
Frequently asked questions
Why is cheese pressed?
To squeeze out the whey and join the cheese grains into one dense wheel. The harder the pressing, the firmer the cheese.
Are all cheeses pressed?
No. Many soft and fresh cheeses are not pressed: they are left to drain, salted and packed.
Recipes
What to read next
- 🔄 Curdling — Rennet coagulates casein into a curd (the basis of cheese).
- 🧀 Semi-hard cheeses — Pressed cheeses of medium moisture that ripen from a few weeks to several months, such as Gouda, Edam and Monterey Jack.
- 🧀 Pecorino Siciliano — Pecorino Siciliano is an Italian PDO cheese from Sicily made from raw whole sheep's milk, sold fresh, semi-aged or aged (at least 4 months).
- 🔄 Ripening — Maturing cheese for weeks to years.
- 🧀 Pecorino Sardo — Pecorino Sardo is a semi-cooked Italian PDO cheese made from whole ewe's milk in Sardinia, in two types: Dolce (20–60 days) and Maturo (at least 2 months).
Similar
🔄 Ripening · 🔄 Curdling · 🔄 Standardization · ❄️ Freezing · 🔄 Milk reception · 🏷️ Labelling