Skim milk is used to make starter cultures and lower fat cheeses, e.g., cottage cheese, and hard grating cheeses, e.g., Romano, Parmesan. It takes about 10 pounds of milk to make 1 pound of cheese. After coagulation, the whey is removed and the curds are processed into cheese. Most of the water in milk is removed as whey. This results in an approximately 10-fold concentration of fat and casein.
Cheese contains almost all of the essential vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients found in milk.
Manufacturing is, essentially, the first 24 hours of cheesemaking, from pasteurization to final salting. Ripening is the process of aging. The following steps are the basic method for making cheese. Pasteurization is a heat treatment of milk to destroy pathogenic bacteria that cause human disease. Pasteurization does not sterilize the milk.