A little history about...The mozzarella cheese

The mozzarella cheese

Mozzarella is a fresh cheese (not aged) made with a spun dough. It is traditionally made with buffalo (bufflone) milk but nowadays it also uses cow's milk for industrial production. It is produced in the form of slightly flattened balls, surrounded by a thin crust that is neither sticky nor rough.

Native to the swampy areas of Italy, specifically Campania, it sports a pure white color leaning towards yellow when it is made out of cow's milk. This Italian specialty is named "mozzarella" following one of the essential steps in its manufacture: "Mozzata."

To sum up the chain of production of this cheese, there is a first step which rennet is added to milk to make the milk curd, and a second where it is recovered as the curd is cut and dipped in the hot water. The third step, spinning, spinning is the mozzarella to make it more elastic. Finally, in fourth place, "Mozzata", the dough is cut to give the cheese its final size and shape.

It is important to understand the history of the mozzarella, interest in the buffalo, which are closely related to the cheese. In the seventh century, the Italians brought back the buffalo from Asia in order to help farmers work the land of their swampy areas, since these animals with large hooves could easily move, without sinking in the mud. Thus, the milk of buffaloes, with its special flavors initially had no value, so it was used for making mozzarella. The new product had a huge success and was produced from the year 1600, publicly traded in Naples and Capua, arriving just as gold and wheat. At first, the mozzarella was made up mainly of buffalo milk, or with its growing success, the buffalo producing only small amounts (18 to 20 liters), cow's milk was used to compensate for the production shortfall. Accordingly, the classic mozzarella mozzarella is the "di Bufala Campana".

In 1996, a label is created specifically for the buffalo milk mozzarella, the PDO (Protected Designation of Origin), to regulate the production of this cheese at Campania in Italy. Today, mozzarella continues to expand its reputation and made many followers, as the Swiss, who are likely to cite this as their favorite cheese. Note also that the production of mozzarella having many industrialized, 90% of production is based on cow's milk.