I have been considering cheese making for the last while. The process that is. Really there are a few things that you need to understand before you begin. (all comments are focused on hard cheese making, as that is predominately what I have made).
1. Master your cooktop. Be it gas or electric or a waterbath, understand how to control the temperature and where to stop it so it gets to where you need it. Also understand the effects of a light breeze and a sunny window will have! That lovely breeze will steal your temps and that sunny patch will make it go crazy.
2. Steralise everything! Your basically growing bacteria here, and you do not want that to go wrong. And with that in mind, don't make cheese if your sick. Lets not accidentally spread that nasty around.
3. Know your recipe BEFORE you even buy your milk. Work out your timings so you know when the best time to start something is. Not something that you'll have enough experience with necessarily in the beginning, but you'll learn. No making cheese at 2am because you started something that should be a during the day recipe at 7pm!
As for the actual making of cheese and the recipes themselves you have a few variables, and all making cheese really is is altering those variables to suit the type of cheese.
a) Temperatures. This effects your bacteria, how much they grow, how much gas they produce, how they effect the proteins and the acidity.
b) Bacterias. Different starter bacteria have different effects on cheese. Gases produced, acidity and activation temperatures effect your flavors. Some cheese call for a mixture of bacteria's (with temperature activation being the key for some flavors here) others for one. Some for a primary and a secondary (for external mold growth). Be very very careful with contamination. I can not stress enough that the 'blood temperature' you are working with your milk in can make for some bad bad juju when playing with bacteria.
c) Processing the curd. From how it is cooked (or not), what size the curd is cut to and how much or long the rennet is left to set. All these things effect the texture of the cheese (amongst other things).
d) Pressing. Different weights, different lengths of time, breaking up the curd at the end of each press. And also not pressing (my asiago isn't pressed it is molded).
e) Aging. Whether a cheese is brined, waxed, bandaged, wrapped in paper or has external mold all effect your end product. As does the length of time that it is aged. Generally the longer you leave a cheese the richer and more complex the flavors, but that is not always the case.
I find cheese making easy. Not sure totally why, but I get it. It just clicks. I am not an expert. I have a lot to learn still. But I enjoy it. If my babbling helps others, awesome. :)
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