Debbie in Italy, Part 2: Fresh Pecorino

This is the second post from Debbie Driscoll documenting what she learned in Italy last Fall. Debbie, owner of Debbie's Delicious Cheese, teaches home cheesemaking classes in Portland and beyond. You can find a listing of her upcoming classes at debbiesdeliciouscheese.com.

Base Recipe: Pecorino Fresco Bianco
(This is the base recipe for most of Podere Paugnano's other cheeses and I'll refer to it in all other pecorino entries.)

One of the simplest and the freshest cheese made at Podere Paugnano was their Pecorino Fresco Bianco, which translates to Fresh White Sheep-Milk Cheese. It is fresh and white because it hasn't had a chance to develop any rind. They used the same recipe for the Fresco Bianco as for their aged cheeses, but stored it at a cooler temperature and sold it within 10 days of production.

All sheep milk cheeses are called pecorino. In Italian pecora means sheep, and pecorino is the name for any sheep milk cheese. You'll see in this recipe and the recipes that follow that pecorino cheeses in Italy come in a much, much wider variety than pecorino in the US, where pecorino usually refers to a variety aged 12 months or more so that it is hard enough for grating. At least 95% of what the Porcus produced was aged less than a year.

One thing you'll notice right away about the recipe is that it does not call for any starter culture. Podere Paugnano produced all organic, raw cheeses and did not use any cultures, which is the traditional method of pecorino production. Even the other creamery I visited was surprised at this technique. It is surprising because it is somewhat risky from a health and consistency perspective: starter cultures tend to crowd out any less-desired or harmful bacteria in the milk and also impart a fairly consistent flavor. And yet this technique allows the terrior to shine through.

Ingredients:
12 liters raw sheep milk
7 g rennet dissolved in water just before adding to milk

Notes:
- They used animal rennet in paste form or vegetable rennet in liquid form, depending on the batch
- The rennets used in Italy are 1:20,000 (single strength) and 1:10,0000 (double strength) while the rennet we use in the US is typically 1:15,000 (single strength) and 1:7,500 (double strength). So for this recipe, 7g of single strength Italian rennet is equal to 9 1/3g of single strength American rennet.

Instructions:
1. Heat milk to 40C.
2. Add rennet and stir for 1 minute.
3. Let set for 20 minutes, or until clean break (I was visiting at the end of the lactation cycle and due to the impact of the sheep's hormonal changes on the coagulation properties of the milk it took about an hour for the milk to set. So the set time can vary tremendously based on season.)
4. Cut curd into corn size pieces, then continue to agitate for 15 minutes, maintaining the curd at 38-40C the entire time.
5. Pour into molds (no leader needed). (They typically used approximately 8-inch high, 8-inch diameter molds)
6. Use hands to press curd in molds and expel whey. As curds compress, add more curd and repress so that curd is level or nearly level with top of mold.
7. Maintain temperature of curd at 38-40C while allowing to drain freely for 45 minutes. The Porcus used a covered draining table that they filled with steam.
8. Flip cheese in the mold. (No need to apply pressure again.)
9. Return to 38-40C environment for 45 minutes.
10. Flip again.
11. Return to 38-40C environment for 20 minutes.
12. Keep cheese in molds and transfer to room temperature rack. Store at room temperature for 1 day.
13. After the day at room temperature, unmold, flip, apply a thin coating of salt to the surface of the cheese and return to mold. Let sit for 5 hours per kilogram of cheese. (For example, if you have a 1 kg cheese, let salt sit on cheese for 5 hours. If you have a 2 kg cheese, let salt sit on cheese for 10 hours.)
14. After the salt has absorbed for the appropriate amount of time, unmold and rinse salt from cheese.
15. Place unmolded cheese in 8C environment for up to 10 days.


Tool used for curd cutting as well as agitating the curd after cutting


Pressing the curd and then adding more curd to each mold as the curd level dropped due to whey expulsion.


Final hand pressing of the curd.


Flipping the cheese


The "fresh cheese" aging room, kept at 8C

Pecorino Fresco Abbucciato
This is a fresh sheep milk cheese "with skin" (abbucciato). It is made using the exact same recipe as Pecorino Fresco Bianco, but oiled (to aid in rind development) and aged longer.

Instructions:
Follow steps 1-14 in the Base Recipe: Pecorino Fresco Bianco.
15. After 10 days of aging at 8C, apply a thin coating of olive oil to the cheese. This is an optional step. Alternately, Giovanna mentioned that she sometimes likes to coat with tomato juice instead of olive oil.
16. Return to 8C storage for up to 3 months.
17. Wash mold from cheese with water and pat dry before cutting/serving.


Oiling the cheese after 10 days aging. These wheels will then return to the aging room for further aging. (Two unidentified types of pecorino are being oiled in this photo.)"


Pecorino Fresco Abbucciato ready for sale

Pecorino Erborinato
This recipe is for a sheep milk blue cheese, but I have no idea what makes it blue. I watched Giovanni make a batch of this and he didn't add any molds or culture and they don't poke any holes in it. When it does get some blue, it's only a small amount (as far as I could see in the wheels they broke open while I was there). I found that I particularly enjoyed the flavor of this cheese because it was not too sheepy and had a creamy flavor.

The instructions are identical to the Base Recipe: Pecorino Fresco Bianco, but with slight changes in all of the target temperatures and a longer aging period. Even though this is aged for up to 4 months, the Porcus still considered this a fresh cheese. I think this was mainly because it was aged in the 8C cave with the other fresh cheese.

Instructions:
1. Heat milk to 38C.
2. Add rennet and stir for 1 minute.
3. Let set for 20 minutes, or until clean break.
4. Cut curd into corn size pieces, then continue to agitate for 15 minutes, maintaining the curd at 43C the entire time.
5. Pour into molds (no leader needed). (They typically used approximately 8-inch high, 8-inch diameter molds)
6. Use hands to press curd in molds and expel whey. As curds compress, add more curd and repress so that curd is level or nearly level with top of mold.
7. Maintain temperature of curd at 30C while allowing to drain freely for 45 minutes. The Porcus used a covered draining table that they filled with steam.
8. Flip cheese in the mold. (No need to apply pressure again.)
9. Return to 30C environment for 45 minutes.
10. Flip again.
11. Return to 30C environment for 20 minutes.
12. Keep cheese in molds and transfer to room temperature rack. Store at room temperature for 1 day.
13. After the day at room temperature, unmold, flip, apply a medium coating of salt to the surface of the cheese and return to mold. Let sit for 5 hours per kilogram of cheese. (For example, if you have a 1 kg cheese, let salt sit on cheese for 5 hours. If you have a 2 kg cheese, let salt sit on cheese for 10 hours.)
14. After the salt has absorbed for the appropriate amount of time, unmold and rinse salt from cheese.
15. Place unmolded cheese in 8C environment for 10 days.
16. After 10 days at 8C, apply a thin coating of oil.
17. Return to the 8C environment for 1 to 4 months.
18. Wash mold from cheese with water and pat dry before cutting/serving.


The salting step for a batch of erborinato

Debbie in Italy, Part 1: Cheese Voyeur in Italy

Debbie Driscoll, who has become my partner in cheese crime, visited Italian cheesemakers last fall. We spoke of her trip during our last podcast, where she also promised to post blog articles on her trip here on this blog. I am happy to present the first entry on her trip.

This past autumn, fueled purely by a passion for cheesemaking, I quit my jetsetting job at a design consultancy in Portland, OR and headed to Italy to apprentice (a.k.a. volunteer as a migrant worker) at a pecorino formaggeria in Tuscany. While there, I managed to land a second gig at a buffalo and cow milk cheese producer in Jesi, Italy.

This was too good of an experience not to share with the greater cheesemaking community, so through this blog I’ll share everything I can about the experience - the recipes, tools and techniques from the two creameries where I was lucky enough to make cheese alongside masters of the craft.

But first I should answer the two questions I get asked most often when I tell others about my experience. Why cheesemaking? Why Italy?

At the time of my trip I was honestly at a loss to explain, but after months of impassioned cheesemaking plus some space to ruminate, my mind slowly made sense of what felt like a primal need to make cheese.

My original career choice was product design - a degree program that offered a perfect balance of thinking and making. The path I wound up following in the decade since graduation resulted in countless PowerPoint decks, an encyclopedia worth of carefully crafted email communications, and what felt like a barely perceptible role (by the time the product hit the shelf) in the production of printers, air conditioners, and credit cards. As a manager of the people designing these products, it was hard to put my finger on what I did every day since there was little if anything to physically show for my work.

In cheesemaking, my day-long efforts resulted in something that could be consumed through all the senses. It fed my needs for craft and gave me something to “show” for my work that could be appreciated by others. To my surprise, it also required an incredible amount of thinking. I found myself so wrapped up in dosage conversions, acidity titrations and discerning which strains of bacteria to use that I was unable to talk at times, much to my husband’s consternation.

My choice to study in Italy was a little less philosophical. In early 2010 my sabbatical was approaching (I hadn’t yet decided to leave my job). Combining my cheesemaking hobby with some travel seemed like an ideal sabbatical pursuit. I had already traveled a good bit in France can’t stand to eat goat cheese, so France didn’t seem like the best option. I love cheddar cheese, but heading to England didn’t seem like as much of an adventure as I was hoping for. On the other hand, Italians make great non-goaty cheese and I’d never been there. And with that logic worked out, I became a woman on a mission to find cheesemakers in Italy.

After months of looking for ways to make contact, an employee at The Cheese Bar recommended looking into the organizations Farm Exchange and World Wide Opportunities in Organic Farming (WWOOF), both of which are organizations that connect farms in need of an extra hand with volunteers who want to work on farms. WWOOF had many more cheesemakers on their list so I paid $35 to join the Italian chapter and began sending emails to all the cheesemakers without goats.

After receiving several notes explaining that the sheep weren’t going to be producing any milk at the time of my visit (learning #1: lactation cycles of sheep) and no replies for cow owners, one family replied that if I got my tookus there quickly I’d get to do some cheesemaking with them before their herd went dry for the season.

I had just left my job the week before, so I was free to flit off to Italy. So I booked a ticket, checked out a stack of Italian language learning books from the library, and 3.5 weeks later was on a flight to Rome.

After about 36 hours of air, train, subway and bus travel, I arrived just past nightfall to Podere Paugnano in Radicondoli, Tuscany, about 30 miles west of Siena. I was welcomed by owners Giovanni and Giovanna Porcu, along with their daughters Tamara and Natalie.


Giovanna and Giovanni, my kind and wonderful hosts in Radicondoli, Tuscany


Entrance to Giovanni and Giovanna's Agrotourismo (working farm bed and breakfast) and Cheese Shop


The Porcu's herd of Sardenian milk sheep.


The Formaggeria (cheese shop)

In addition to 300 Sardinian milk sheep and the formaggeria, Podere Paugnano includes an agrotourismo (a working farm bed and breakfast), a variety of farm animals and a by-reservation restaurant of sorts in which Giovanna prepared phenomenal five- to seven-course meals for local or international guests in her kitchen.

After nearly two weeks of working and studying at Podere Paugnano, one of their agrotourismo guests very kindly arranged my second apprenticeship with his sister- and brother-in-law, Giulia and Antonio Trionfi, who run Caseificio Piandelmedico in Jesi (Ancona province) near the Adriatic coast.


Caseificio Piandelmedico


A buffalo calf that was born on the first day I arrived

Antonio managed the feed and care of their 150 Asian water buffalo and 150 milk cows (of varying breeds) while Giulia, with assistance from her husband Chris, managed the creamery. They produced milk, mozzarella, yogurt, and a wide range of fresh and aged cheeses.

I kept a separate blog of my travel experiences along with the many amazing Italian food recipes I learned from Giovanna, including quite a few that utilized their outstanding pecorino cheeses, at www.brettanddebbie.com (see the September and October 2010 archives).

In this blog I will focus on cheesemaking techniques and the recipes I learned at Podere Paugnano and Caseificio Piandelmedico. I’ve been able to test nearly all of the recipes I learned at Piandelmedico, but am still looking for sheep milk so I can try out the recipes from Podere Paugnano. Please let me know if you have a connection or if you are able to give the recipes a try!

My hope is that this blog comes alive with comments, experiences and suggestions from the readers and cheesemakers out there. Let the discussion begin!