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Fermentation Atlas

Cheese from Italy

Caciottacaciotta

Caciotta is a small, soft-to-semi-soft Italian table cheese, mostly made from pasteurised cow milk, sometimes mixed with ewe milk. The milk is soured with thermophilic starter, set with calf rennet, moulded without cooking and brined. It ripens about two weeks for the fresh kind or up to two months for the aged kind, with its surface washed in brine. Made in 7 steps over 30 days. The longest step, ripen and wash with brine, takes 30 days (Calasso M. et al. 2020) and runs at 9 °C (Calasso M. et al. 2020). Salt is 37 % (Calasso M. et al. 2020). Streptococcus thermophilus and Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. lactis do most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step30 daysReported[calasso2020]Ripen and wash with brine
Temperature9 °CReported[calasso2020]Ripen and wash with brine
Salt37 %Reported[calasso2020]Brine
AciditypH 5.3Measured[calasso2020]Rest in the moulds while the curd sours

Recipe

Amounts from a sourceAmounts from one industrial make of 400 litres of cow milk (Calasso 2020). Caciotta has no national specification, and farm and regional recipes vary.
Cow milk, pasteurised · In the study batch, milk with 3.6 % fat, 3.3 % protein and pH 6.6[calasso2020]
Thermophilic starter (Streptococcus thermophilus and Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. lactis)[calasso2020]
35 ml per 100 litres of milkLiquid calf rennet[calasso2020]
Salt (brine)[calasso2020]
Starterthermophilic culture (Streptococcus thermophilus and Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. lactis)

Total time across the recorded steps: 30 days

Start
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71 °C

What changes: The milk is pasteurised, then cooled to blood warmth

Step 1 of 7
Pasteurise the milk
Time
Not documented
Temperature
71 °C
Reported
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
S. thermophilus
L. delbrueckii
Leuconostoc
Staphylococcus equorum

Output: pasteurised milk, cooled at once to 37 °C.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

heat kills the raw milk's mesophilic bacteria

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

What makes this one different

Caciotta is a name for a style, not a protected cheese. It is small, soured with thermophilic starter, uncooked and brine-salted, and is eaten young, from two weeks to two months.

Milk
Mostly pasteurised cow milk, sometimes mixed with ewe milk; regional ewe and goat versions
Ripening
About 15 days for the fresh kind; up to 2 months for the aged kind (about 60 % dry matter)
Size
Cylinder 4–8 cm high and 8–16 cm across, 0.8–2.0 kg
Composition
One day after making, 48.1 % moisture, 24.4 % fat and 21.5 % protein; after 30 days about 25.8 % fat and 30.6 % protein

Related ferments

Variants

  • Ewe-milk caciotta (Sardinia)Pasteurised ewe milk set at 37 °C, brined 12–16 hours and ripened 2 months at 12–15 °C and 85 % relative humidity (Pisano 2020).
  • Mountain caciottaCaciotta from Italian mountain farms; the added starter strains largely colonise the cheese (Cardin 2024).

Safety

Most caciotta is made from pasteurised milk. In the study batch, heat treatment at 71 °C for 15 s killed the raw milk's mesophilic bacteria before the starter went in.

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

Caciotta is made in almost every Italian region; Italian production is about 23,000 tonnes a year (Assolatte figure quoted by Calasso 2020).

  1. [calasso2020] Calasso M. et al. 2020, Attenuated Lactococcus lactis and surface bacteria as tools for conditioning the microbiota and driving the ripening of semisoft Caciotta cheese, Applied and Environmental Microbiology 86(5):e02165-19 (control cheese made by the conventional protocol)paper
  2. [pisano2020] Pisano M.B. et al. 2020, Influence of autochthonous putative probiotic cultures on microbiota, lipid components and metabolome of Caciotta cheese, Frontiers in Microbiology 11:583745paper
  3. [cardin2024] Cardin M. et al. 2024, Ecological diversity and associated volatilome of typical mountain Caciotta cheese from Italy, International Journal of Food Microbiology 411:110523 (abstract)paper