I have no childhood memories of eating homemade bread. It’s not that my Mother dislikes cooking, as she often shares with me a new recipe she is trying, I think she just had her hands full raising four children while working as a Registered Nurse. No memories of my Grandmother making bread either, however, her fresh pan-fried Rainbow Trout— she and my Grandfather caught in a local stream — I remember well, along with raspberries from her garden and fresh spring rhubarb, with which she always supplied a small dipping bowl full of granulated sugar. Yum! What an amazing concept for a young boy; dip that sour stem into enough sugar—and I mean load it up—and it actually tastes good. So the question becomes; when did bread making fall out of favor, or was I merely brought up in a family with limited culinary interest?

I bring up bread since it is far more likely that the average person will have an experience with bread making in the family kitchen than a memory of cheese making at home. Unfortunately, both of these processes of fermentation have all but disappeared from the home kitchen of the 21^st century.

With over 27 years of vast experiences in the culinary field, including culinary school­ (we did make bread), I was never introduced to the art of making cheese. Shocking, I know. Cheese is this wonderfully diverse food product with so many unique and varying characteristics and to me it was this big mystery. Sure, I understood the basics; it’s made from various animal milks with the addition of bacteria, curds are involved—my home state of Minnesota and its neighbor Wisconsin were known for them—and then comes the aging. I was curious about the process involved and what causes the white mold on the outside of a Camembert, the holes in a wheel of Swiss cheese or the dense-crystallized texture of an aged Parmigiano Reggiano.

I dusted off my bookshelf and came up with a paperback book I acquired long ago at a used book store titled “Cheesemaking Made Easy” by Ricki Carroll and I read it cover to cover. Now, how do I begin? I decided to call in the local expert. I had met Caitlin Hunter (award-winning artisan cheese maker from Appleton Creamery) when I was working on my first cookbook and I use her goat cheeses extensively at the Inn. When my mother-in-law visits in the summer, she won’t leave the state without a few jars of Caitlin’s goat cheese packed in olive oil with basil, garlic and pine nuts. It just so happened that Caitlin was holding a workshop on cheese making a few weeks later and I received the education I had longed for. What a wonderful experience and the “mystery” of turning milk into cheese was gone.

My first instinct in a situation like this is to go out and buy all the equipment needed for this new passion in my life, just ask my wife. So I cleared out a room in my basement and created a “cheese room and cellar.” A few weeks and several hundreds of dollars later I acquired some fresh cow’s milk and made my first cheese at home; a five pound wheel of Gouda. I followed the instructions that Ricki Carroll outlined in her book; ripened the milk with bacterial culture, added the rennet, cut, cooked and drained the curd, molded, pressed and soaked the cheese in a brine, dried it, waxed it and finally put it away to age.

The investment in equipment was large (I went a little overboard) and fresh local milk is not inexpensive unless you happen to have a goat or flock of sheep in the backyard, but the experience, as the Master Card commercial states, was priceless. It was the most expensive cheese I have ever eaten, but it was made with my own hands, with local organic milk and it tasted pretty good. I went on to make blue cheese, Emmenthaler and most recently I made a Swiss cheese with local Sheep’s milk. I recruited my kitchen staff to assist in my latest cheese experience and they seem to show a genuine interest in the process, so it looks like we will be making our own cheeses on a regular basis at the Inn. Who knows, maybe they will take the art of cheese making home to their kitchens and families and inspire a new generation of home-cheese makers.

Michael Salmon is the chef and owner of The Hartstone Inn .