Cheese is especially difficult to make because of the difficulty of finding what is called a starter. The starter is basicly the bacteria culture added to the milk to start the curd formation. It is possible to make cheese without a starter, but the starter is what gives different cheeses their distinctive flavor, and without one the cheese almost always ends up tasting like pot cheese, more commonly known as farmer's cheese or cottage cheese.

In prehistoric times someone must have discovered that when milk turns sour the white curd tastes good and moreover, that it keeps well. Cheese primarily consists of the solid elements of milk: the fat, the proteins and the vitamins and minerals. Ten kilos of milk are required to make one kilo of cheese. Cheese is made by curdling the milk. The homogeneous fluid changes into a mixture of solid particles and a pale yellow liquid. These are seperated and the solid elements make up the curd. The residual fluid is called whey.

The curd is pressed into moulds, after which the cheese goes into a brine bath for several days. Subsequently it is stored and thus gradually matures into the delicious product we can buy in the shops. Through the centuries numerous versions to the cheese making process were found resulting in many hundreds of regional varieties.

The cheesemaking process on the farm and in the creamery is basically the same. The method and the ingredients used are laid down by law, and if made differently, the product cannot be called "cheese". The major difference between farm and creamery cheese is their starting ingredient, the milk. On the farm raw milk, which is the cooled milk of the previous evening and the milk, still warm from the morning's milking, is the basis.

There are 3 big differences between making dutch cheese in the creamery and making dutch cheese on the farm:

1.	At the creamery the milk is first pasteurised, which means that it is heated to a temperature of about 65 degrees Celcius for fifteen seconds thus eliminating any bacteria.
2.	At the creamery the milk is standardized, in other words the fat content of the milk is constant. On the farm the fat content may vary.
3.	Making cheese on the farm is still a craft and made by hand. Cheese making in the creamery is a highly automated production process, during which the cheese is not handled. Moulding, turning, brining, is all completely computerised. Gigantic robots, moving independently, transport the cheese in and out of the warehouse. Modern creameries produce daily some 5,000 cheeses each weighing between 2 and 15 kilos.