Product Information
Cream Cheese Starter
Bacillus Bulgaricus Cream Cheese starter makes deliciously creamy and thick Cream Cheese of exceptional quality.
Our Cream Cheese starter comes in two varieties – one with the traditional classic, crisp and slightly tangy taste and the other – a lighter, milder, sweeter, and creamier French style cream cheese (why two varieties?).
Cultured Cream Cheese is a fermented dairy product obtained by fermenting regular cream with beneficial lactic acid bacteria until it thickens, then straining it to make a firmer spreadable cream cheese. The entire process is very easy to follow, takes very little active hands on time, has a high yield, and the result is amazingly delicious! On top of that, cultured cream cheese is much better for your digestive system than regular cream cheese.
Cream Cheese
Our Cream Cheese is soft, creamy, and delicious. Our cultured Cream Cheese comes in two flavors - the traditional classic, crisp and slightly tangy taste and a lighter, milder, sweeter, and creamier French style.
Our cultured Cream Cheese is absolutely delicious. Whether you love cream cheese for spread on toast or bagels, for making cheesecakes or cream cheese frosting, for cooking or sauces, it is so much tastier and healthier when you make it yourself! And the opportunities for the different flavors of cheese cream you can make are endless!
Our Cream Cheese starter makes deliciously creamy and thick Cream Cheese of exceptional quality. The starter comes in two flavor varieties – one with the traditional classic, crisp and slightly tangy taste and the other – a lighter, milder, sweeter, and creamier French style cream cheese (why two varieties?).
You can use raw or pasteurized regular cream, double cream, half-and-half, or a mixture of cream and milk. The higher the fat of your original cream, the thicker and more delicious your cream cheese will become.
Our Cream Cheese starter is a mesophilic product, which means you can culture it at room temperature. It is super easy to make cream cheese! Just add the culture to cream to ferment it, then strain it to get thick spreadable cream cheese, and you’re done. There’s no need to heat the cream or keep it warm in a yogurt maker, though you can if you want to (here is some more information, if you want to experiment with the heating method).
This is Cream Cheese starter with live active bacteria, which means that you can reuse cream cheese from your previous batch to culture your new batch, for as long as you wish.
The starter contains lactic acid cultures isolated from natural sources in ecologically preserved areas in Bulgaria. It is fully natural and organic with no preservatives, additives, artificial colors or flavors. It contains no GMO ingredients and it is soy and gluten free. Halal. Kosher.
Product Details
Type: Heirloom Cream Cheese starter. This means that you can make endless batches of cream cheese, simply reusing your previously made cream cheese to start a new batch.
Activity and Strength: 1 gram of starter contains at least 55 billion colony-forming unit (2.5 x 1010 CFU/g) of lactic acid probiotic bacteria strains.
100% potency guaranteed. 100% viability guaranteed.
Ingredients: Live active lactic acid cultures.
Classic variety: Live active lactic acid cultures of Lactobacillus bulgaricus, Streptococcus thermophilus, and Lactococcus lactis.
Mild & Sweet variety: Live active lactic acid cultures of Lactobacillus bulgaricus, Streptococcus thermophilus, Lactococcus helveticus and Lactococcus lactis.
The starter contains nothing more than the strains it is made of and a very small quantity of dried organic skim milk powder. It is the medium on which the strains grow and some of it gets packaged together with them. The milk powder is completely consumed by the bacteria during incubation so there is none of it in the finished product. See some more information about our lactose free and vegan starters.
Contents: This is an heirloom starter with freeze-dried live active bacteria.
Each sachet contains loose powder mix, in perfect proportions, of the strains required to make excellent Cream Cheese, with two different flavor profiles. The exact amount of starter varies per pack and is indicated, in grams, under your selected pack size on the product purchase page. More information about various pack sizes and their contents can be found here.
Packaging: Aluminum foil pouches, sealed. 100% recyclable.
Details: 100% natural. 100% plastic free. No additives. Gluten free. Soy free. GMO free. Halal. Kosher.
Milk/cream to use with: This starter is OK to use with raw or pasteurized regular cream, double cream, half-and-half, or a mixture of cream and milk. You can also use non-dairy heavy cream, however when using vegan creams you might need to add a thickener as those won’t usually thicken on their own.
The higher the fat of the cream you start with, the thicker and more delicious your cream cheese will become.
Nutritional Information: Available here
Lab test data: Available on request.
Industrial size option: Available on request.
Origin: Produced in Bulgaria.
Storage
Store the Cream Cheese starter in the FREEZER.
Use by the date indicated on the label.
Bacillus Bulgaricus starters are shipped in sealed sachets.
Transporting the packs (i.e. shipping them to you) at ambient temperatures (even in the warmest climates) is perfectly OK and will not damage the live cultures. We use a freeze-dried process that keeps the strains alive and comfortable even during long trips in hot weather.
Once you receive your starter packs – pop them in the refrigerator or the freezer for best storage.
- 2+ years at around 0°F (-18°C) or lower (in the freezer)
- 1-2 years at around 40°F (4°C) (in the fridge)
- Up to 1 year at ambient (room) temperature.
Unfreezing the starter packs and freezing them again (e.g. when using only a portion) is OK to do, even multiple times.
Make sure you store open sachets in a way that prevents moisture from getting in, i.e. well closed in a Ziploc bag or wrapped around and fastened with a rubber band.
Usage
The packs are packaged and labeled with the grams they contain and the volume those grams make when used entirely in one go.
The packs are intended for single use, or their contents could be split for multiple use.
When you split the pack, take out as much as you need to make your yogurt, then reseal and refreeze the remaining starter for later. Make sure you store the sachets in a way that prevents moisture from getting in, i.e. well closed in a Ziploc bag or wrapped around and fastened with a rubber band.
When you split the contents of the pack and use less starter amount to make smaller volumes, keep in mind that you are also reducing the total amount of yogurt that you can make from the pack (read more on that here).
Refer to this page to see the gram to Liters (gallons) chart and to find out how much starter to use for different volumes of milk.
How To Make Cream Cheese
Making cream cheese is easy, in fact cultured cream cheese is one of the easiest cheeses you can make! We have included two sets of instructions how to make Cream Cheese:
- A traditional method for making Cream Cheese – if you prefer to make your Cream Cheese the conventional way, manually or with the help of a yogurt-making machine.
- A fail proof method for making Cream Cheese – if you have difficulties getting good results with the traditional method or would like to get your results faster, try this fail-proof manual method instead.
Bacillus Bulgaricus Cream Cheese Starter
Cream Cheese
Our Cream Cheese is soft, creamy, and delicious. Our cultured Cream Cheese comes in two flavors - the traditional classic, crisp and slightly tangy taste and a lighter, milder, sweeter, and creamier French style.