How Italian Gorgonzola Cheese Is Made | Regional Eats | Food Insider

Hi, guys. This is Claudia, and today I'm going to take you to see how gorgonzola cheese is made in Italy. I'm in Trecate, in the Piedmont region, which is one of the only two Italian regions, together with Lombardy, where this cheese can be made. And this is one of the only 29 dairies in the world that can produce this cheese. The gorgonzola industry is worth over $800 million. Almost 5 million wheels are produced each year, and production is confined to this small area only. Gorgonzola cheese has a centuries-old history, and it is still done using the same ingredients and techniques that it was decades ago. Even machines like this one, used to stir the curd, are designed to recreate human movements as gently as possible. Its beautiful, marbled interior is given by Penicillium roqueforti, a fungus that is used to ripen the cheese. And this is why, in fact, blue cheese is called so. The Bergamini did it with cows, so they brought the cows to the pasture, basically. My family is a Bergamini family, and it is from these families that they began to transform the milk they collected into cheese. In our case, they made cheese from herbs. So, how? Basically, after making the cheese, it was left to age in these, which used to be natural caves, so natural caves. Then there were the houses, which were particular buildings that went underground in Balsassina. Then, later on, all the producers, the major producers of Gorgonzola, for, let's say, economic reasons, because the stalls in the Padana plain had developed, so the trade had increased, they moved to the Padana plain. Gorgonzola cheese is made with unskimmed, pasteurized cow's milk, and it can either be mild and creamy or hard and pungent, depending on how long it is left to age. The two kinds are easily distinguishable by the color of their veins, blue in the creamy and green in the pungent. Penicillium roqueforti, the fungus, is added to milk at the very beginning of the production process, in a big cauldron, together with enzymes, rennet, and yeast. In about 20 minutes, milk becomes curd, and can be transferred into molds. Each wheel is marked with the dairy's identification number. You can see number 60 here. That's Cassificio C. Invernizzi we visited. Here, between 450 and 500 Gorgonzola wheels are made every day. To help the curd settle, wheels are turned four times and then left to rest overnight. Then they are salted a couple of times. At this stage, they weigh about 18 kilos, that's 40 pounds, but this number will drop to 12 kilos, 26 pounds, at the end of the aging process, as excess whey is released. The salting rooms are warm and humid. This is also to favor the activity of yeasts inside the cheese. Mild Gorgonzola wheels stay for three days and hard Gorgonzola for five. Then they are moved again into a cold room, where they're punctured 100 times on each side. This is to allow oxygen into the cheese for it to grow its signature blue veins. All Gorgonzolas at Cassificio C. Invernizzi are punctured with a machine, but some other in-house cheeses are still punctured by hand. After this step, the cheese is left to age. It takes two months for the blue, creamy Gorgonzola and three months for the green, pungent one. The color difference is pretty evident, but do they really taste different? The dairy set up a little cheese tasting so that we could try them both. That's amazing, my God. It almost doesn't feel like, you know, you're biting into cheese. It just smells in your mouth. Oh, wow. They are so different, it's crazy. You know? I mean, you can tell from the texture that this is harder and this is creamier, but this is much, much stronger. It has a stronger bite. After trying Gorgonzola on its own, in-house chef Giampiero Cravero wanted to show me how versatile the cheese is, so he cooked some squid ink spaghetti with both cheeses. Your first. Wow, cheese tastes very strong, but I think the combination with the squid ink is great. I mean, color-wise, of course, it's amazing because black and white, they're like opposite, right? So you can really see the cheese in there and it's sort of creamy texture on the pasta. Gorgonzola cheese is protected by the European Union by the Protected Designation of Origin scheme. This means that any cheese labeled Gorgonzola must meet a particular set of standards and is subject to quality checks. It's also wrapped in a signature aluminum foil. You'll have a number of folders that you'll have to print on your shapes in the case as soon as they're produced. And, in addition to respecting the days of aging, for example, you'll also have to put on the final shape, when it's completely aged, the corrugated aluminum. This is the way in which you can be protected and a producer must follow to make the Gorgonzola d'Otto, which, in most cases, are historical families that have always produced it, so they originated in these territories.