White Cheese with Sage / Yellow Sage Cheese

1 gallon milk
2 tsp. citric acid or lemon juice
1/8 - 1/4 tsp. rennet
2 Tbls. sage leaves
a bit of carrot juice or turmeric, for yellow cheese

Pour the milk into a large pot. Dissolve the citric acid in a bit of cool water and stir into the milk, or stir the lemon juice directly into the milk. Stir well. Heat the milk slowly to 90 F (use a food thermometer). Try not to let it get above 90. Once it reaches that point, you can turn off the heat without the temperature decreasing.

Stir the sage leaves into the milk. If you are making yellow cheese, add the carrot juice or turmeric at this point. I haven't measured exactly how much is needed, but it really is just a tiny amount. But it also depends on how strong you want the color to be.

Dilute the rennet in a few tablespoons of cool water. My rennet is extra strength that says 1/8 tsp will work on 2 gallons of milk, so I try to approximate 1/2 of a 1/8 tsp. measure. If your rennet doesn't have a suggested ratio on the container, using 1/4 tsp. should be fine.

Stir the rennet dilution into the milk. Let sit until a curd forms, this usually takes 5-10 minutes. Check the curd by sticking in your finger and pulling it out horizontally. Your finger should come out mostly clean with the curd splitting apart around it. You can also check by pulling the curd away from the edge of the pot and having clear whey fill in the space.

Take a long, sharp knife and cut a grid pattern in the curd all the way to the bottom of the pot. Cut several more lines that slant through the depth of the curd. Let rest for a few minutes. The curd should be thick enough that you see the lines you cut, and the cuts will be filled with clear whey.

Line a large bowl with a large piece of cloth (in my experience the commercial cheesecloth is too gauzy, and normal muslin or light linen works better). Pour all the curd and whey into the cloth. Add salt to taste. Twist the cloth closed at the top, trapping all the curd inside. The whey will pour out into the bowl.

Set up your cheese press. You can have a real one or a ghetto one like mine, where I put a wire cooling rack over the sink, placed the bundle of cheese on that, then put a cutting board on top. On the board I used heavy cans of food as weights to press down on the cheese.

Let sit for about an hour, then check to see how solid it is. I added more salt at this point, molded it with my hands into a thicker shape, folded the cloth around it so it didn't make creases in the cheese, and let it press for another 1/2 hour.

This makes about 1 1/2 pounds of a soft cheese.