HISTORY OF CHEESE&WINE MAKING OF CHEESE Cheese is made from whole milk, partially or totally skimmed from cream. The phases of the described production process require a high level of experience, precision, and meticulous attention to details, and it is in fact the master cheesemakers who follow the production chain. A fundamental part of cheese production is the choice of milk, which is a complex and complete product, as it contains protein, fat, lactose, mineral salts, vitamins. In particular, the milk that contains less fat and less protein is cow’s milk, while the more proteinic milk is goat’s milk, and the fatter milk is buffalo’s milk: these differences are then found in the different flavour balances of the resulting cheeses. Finally, the components of milk, even if they are of different milk sources, are always influenced by the animal’s diet, climate and environmental factors. The first stages of milk treatment take place, albeit with small differences, for all types of cheese, from hard to soft cheeses, from washed-rind to soft-ripened. The production of the cheese begins with the pasteurization of the milk, that is a heat treatment to reduce bacteria harmful to our organism. Cheese that bear the PDO, such as the famous Parmigiano Reggiano, are usually not made with pasteurized milk, but raw milk, which will then be grafted with milk enzymes. The milk should not be too “clean” in terms of bacterial load, otherwise it will need to undergo a maturation process to facilitate fermentation. Before cheesemaking, the fat in the milk often is brought to the surface. Immediately afterwards the milk is poured into different recipients depending on the type of cheese, but the most typical container is the copper pot. Some cheeses, such as soft-ripened, washed-rind or blue, such as Gorgonzola, require the grafting of molds, generally some varieties of penicillium.
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