This is an authentic traditional Cream Cheese starter. Each pack contains loose powder mix, in perfect proportions, of the strains required to make the perfect Cream Cheese.

Making cream cheese is easy, in fact cream cheese is one of the easiest cheeses you can make!

Mildly tart, lusciously rich and creamy, homemade cultured Cream Cheese is delicious. Because it is full of probiotics, cultured cream cheese is much more beneficial to your digestive system than regular cream cheese, plus when you make it yourself, there’s no limit to the flavors you can make!

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!

Our 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?).

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!

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.

Ingredients

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.

Storage

Store the Cream Cheese starter packs in the FREEZER.

Use by the date indicated on the label.

The starter packs have 2 years of shelf live. Use by the date indicated on the label.

See more information on the Cream Cheese Starter product information page.

Why Two Varieties of Cream Cheese?

In general, you can adjust the taste of your fermented products by changing the time of fermentation. Since pH is directly linked to the time of fermentation, fermenting your products longer will result in tangier, more acidic, fermented products.

With Cream Cheese however, your total fermentation takes longer (see here Cream Cheese Making Instructions). You have a long fermentation first step and a long straining second step, during which fermentation continues to occur. And since you would likely want your cream cheese to be thick and spreadable, you wouldn’t want to skip or reduce either the fermentation step or the straining step. That takes away the option to use fermentation time as the means of adjusting your cream cheese flavor.

That’s where the two varieties of cream cheese starter come in handy. One has a slightly different formula than the other and because of this, using the same incubation process and fermentation times, the two starter varieties will produce two varieties of cream cheese – one, the traditional classic, crisp and slightly tangy cream cheese taste, and the other – a lighter, milder, sweeter, and creamier French style cream cheese. Choose the flavor you like better or try them both!

Product Information

Additional product information is available below and on the Cream Cheese Starter product information page.

Ingredients	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.
Starter Strength	> 25 billion CFU/g, 100% potency guaranteed
Starter Type	Heirloom Cheese Cream Starter
Details	100% natural, No additives, No preservatives, Gluten free, Soy free, GMO free, Halal, Kosher
Origin	Made in Bulgaria, Original Cream Cheese recipe
Shelf Life	2+ years at -15 C (in the freezer), 1-2 years at 4 C (in the fridge), Up to 1 year at ambient temperature
Storage	Store in FREEZER
Flavor	Classic, Mild & Sweet
Milk Type To Use With	Dairy cream OK, Dairy-free heavy cream OK

Ingredients

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.

The starter is fully natural and organic with no preservatives, additives, artificial colors or flavors. It contains no GMO ingredients. It is soy, nuts, and gluten free.

Activity and Strength

1 gram of starter contains at least 25 billion colony-forming unit (2.5 x 10¹⁰ CFU/g) of lactic acid probiotic bacteria strains.

100% potency guaranteed. 100% viability guaranteed.

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.

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.

Cream Cheese Making Instructions

It is super easy to make Cream Cheese using our Bacillus Bulgaricus starter. Follow this link for the Cream Cheese making instructions.

Why get the Bacillus Bulgaricus Cream Cheese Starter

You should buy this Cream Cheese starter if you are looking for a no-fuss Cream Cheese starter which is easy to use, performs consistently and reliably and makes absolutely delicious cultured cream cheese.

Cream Cheese is full of probiotics which makes it super healthy for you. The price of cream is usually much less than the price of cream cheese, so making your own is a great alternative that also saves you money. Needless to say, homemade cream cheese is near zero-waste as there is no need to recycle another plastic container.

When you make your own Cream Cheese you are in control of all the ingredients so you know what you are putting in your body. Cream Cheese made with Bacillus Bulgaricus starters is full of gut-healthy probiotics that are great for your health. Our Cream Cheese starter is heirloom which means that you can make endless batches of Cream Cheese saving a ton of money while eating healthy – an absolute win-win!

Read this long list of reasons why our starters are good for you.

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 (with the exception of the Sourdough starter which should always be used in one go).

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.

Help

Bacillus Bulgaricus starters are easy to use and are strong enough to make sure that the fermentation process completes naturally and smoothly, under the right conditions.

If you ever need help with using our products or troubleshooting your fermentation method, simply contact us with any questions and we’ll be happy to help.

You can also fill out this help form and we’ll get back to you in no time.

FAQs

If you’d rather read than write us an email, then check out this list of frequently asked questions and answers and Help and How-To articles for some more helpful information.

Nutritional Facts

More nutritional information and labels are available here