Petaluma says 'cheese'

<p>Small teams of budding cheesemakers hovered over their pots of steaming milk Saturday, eagerly anticipating the formation of curds, which would eventually become a creamy mascarpone.</p><p>“You have to be patient,” said teacher Mary Karlin, author of “Artisan Cheese Making at Home” and other cooking books. “Cheese makes you patient.”</p><p>The seminar was part of the three-day Artisan Cheese Festival at the Petaluma Sheraton, which concludes today with chef demonstrations and a marketplace of cheeses, specialty foods, wines and beers.</p><p>Cheese lovers also made batches of goat milk chèvre, a low-fat Indian Panir and fresh ricotta, learning about acids and rennet and cultures needed to turn simple milk and cream into the deliciousness that is cheese.</p><p>Chèvre, the tangy goat's milk cheese often found shaped into logs and sometimes rolled in spices, is a “bridge cheese,” Karlin said. It takes “you into cultured cheese” from simpler ricotta that can be made with lemon juice and milk.</p><p>Bob Peak, a partner with The Beverage People, a cheese, wine and beer-making supply company in Santa Rosa, displayed his ready-made kits for making fresh and cultured cheeses.</p><p>Steven Lovejoy of Sebastopol is becoming a seasoned amateur cheesemaker.</p><p>“I've been doing home cheese for about a year now,” he said. “I started with chèvre and valencay (a mold-ripened chèvre). I'm going to do Roquefort next.”</p><p>Peak said Lovejoy is among the two types of folks he sees at the festival: those who like to make all kinds of foods at home in traditional ways, and those who just like a certain food and want to learn how to make it themselves.</p><p>“Those are people who have tasted an artisan cheese and they want to do that at home,” he said. “'I like that, can I do that at home?' And you can. You can even invent your own cheese.”</p><p>The festival is a nonprofit organization that supports artisan cheesemaking and educates people who want to learn more about it. Proceeds go to several groups including the Redwood Empire Food Bank and the Petaluma Future Farmers of America.</p>