Cheese Making in Umbria

Excavations at the Etruscan settlement researching subsistance, reveal, with the finding of ceramic sieves,
that cheese making was a traditional activity. Today, one shepherd continues the practice.
July, 2013

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Francesco rises before dawn to milk his 200 sheep
He then feeds, with a barley flour, ...
... his hog, 5 sows and their piglets.
Francesco grows 8 hectres but it isn't enough for his animals to he has to buy additional.
This morning's milking produces 30ltrs milk.
Milk from the previous days is stored in a refrigerated vat ...
... and all is ttransferred to gas fired cauldron.
While the milk is heating he prepares 7 desert spoons of a fermenting agent, diluted in 1/2 a litre of water.
The churn and thermomenter are rinsed.
When the milk reaches 35'...
...the fermenting agent is stirred into the milk.
Francesco stirs the mix and leaves it for 30 minutes ...
...while he hoses down the sieves and the stainless steel, rimmed table.
He then checks the consistency lightly with his finger and, satisfied...
...re-lights the gas to raise the temperature to 41', stirring occasionally.
The curds start to rise o the surface.
From time to time he checks the consistency and gives another swirl with his arm.
Once the temperature is reached, he lets the mix rest for 5 minutes ...
...while he separates and arranges the seives ...
...before scooping each sieve into the vat and filling it with curds (cagliata) ...
...pressing down to squeeze out the whey (siero).
Seive after seive are filled ...
...and the pots patted down and placed one over the other for the weight to press out the whey.
Francesco offered me some curds; they were sweet and warm: delicious !
With the bulk of the curds collected, he then scoops the whey from the cauldron ...
... onto the table through a sieve to collect the lasts curds to add to the 20 sieves of fresh cheese.
The whey is drained into the churn, using the seive to again collect any curds.
The vat is then scrupulously cleaned in preparation for making Ricotta. Perfect Ricotta must be soft, thus the vat must be cleaned thoroughly - if any cheese is left at all, it will make the cheese hard.
The whey from the table is collected a churn-full at a time and poured through the seive into the vat.
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