Skip to main content
Support

Browse by category

All categories
Home

Cheese from Italy, Lazio

Primo sale di latte ovino

Morning milk of grazing Sarda sheep is thermised at 57–68 °C and set at 36 °C with kid rennet paste. The curd is broken to maize size, pressed by hand into baskets and drained 5–6 hours in a warm room, then dry-salted for about a day. The fresh cheese is eaten after 1 to 7 days.

Fully documentedCheese2.5 days – 8.5 daysTraditional food product (PAT, Lazio)Family: Uncooked or semi-cooked pressed cheese family (tomme, Saint-Nectaire, Reblochon, Morbier, Raclette)

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedA single-dairy cheese; the sheet gives no batch size or doses. A cheese weighs about 2 kg.
Whole morning milk of Sarda sheep grazing in Tuscia[arsial-sheet][onaf]
Kid rennet paste[arsial-sheet]
Salt (dry salting)[arsial-sheet]

Total time across the recorded steps: 2.5 days – 8.5 days

Start
Drag the bar or press Play
8–10 °C

What changes: Morning sheep milk is chilled for a few hours before work

Step 1 of 8
Chill the morning milk
Time
6 h
Reported
Temperature
8–10 °C
Reported
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

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

At a glance

Morning milk of grazing Sarda sheep is thermised at 57–68 °C and set at 36 °C with kid rennet paste. The curd is broken to maize size, pressed by hand into baskets and drained 5–6 hours in a warm room, then dry-salted for about a day. The fresh cheese is eaten after 1 to 7 days. Made in 8 steps over 2.5 days – 8.5 days. The longest step, short ripening, takes 24 h – 7 days (ARSIAL (Lazio regional agency for agricultura…).

Key numbers
Main step24 h – 7 daysReported[arsial-sheet][onaf]Short ripening
Temperature8–10 °CReported[arsial-sheet]Chill the morning milk

What makes this one different

A fresh primo sale of morning Sarda-sheep milk, thermised, set with kid rennet and drained in a warm room, eaten within a week.

Rind
None, or a very thin soft white rind
Listing
Listed as 'Primo sale di latte ovino' among the cheeses of the Lazio section of the national traditional-products list (2025 edition)
Size
About 2 kg; cylinder with basket marks

Related ferments

Safety

The milk is thermised at 57–68 °C for about 15 seconds. The sheet records no pH or salt values. In a study of a cow-milk primo sale (pH 6.34, 0.36 % salt) inoculated with B. cereus spores, the bacterium grew by about 3.8 log CFU/g in 7 days at 15 °C but did not multiply for 11 days at 10 °C (Tirloni 2023). That cheese is a different one from this sheep cheese.

Hazards the sources name: Bacillus cereus (found at 1.00 log CFU/g in a cow-milk primo sale on the Italian market; not measured in this sheep cheese).

History and sources

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

The sheet links the cheese at Montalto di Castro to the Manca family, who came from Sardinia with their sheep in the 1950s and later began making cheese from their own milk.

Starter
The sources we found do not say how its fermentation begins.
  1. [arsial-sheet] ARSIAL (Lazio regional agency for agricultural development), survey sheet of traditional products of Lazio under DM 350/99, 'Primo sale di latte ovino', copy hosted by ONAFgov
  2. [onaf] ONAF (national organisation of cheese tasters), cheese page 'Primo sale di latte ovino' (id 1312)web
  3. [pat-lazio-list] ARSIAL (Regione Lazio), 'PAT Lazio 2025', the Lazio section of the national list of traditional agri-food products (Annex I, law 238 of 12 December 2016)gov
  4. [tirloni2023] Tirloni E. et al., 2023, Prevalence, Virulence Potential, and Growth in Cheese of Bacillus cereus Strains Isolated from Fresh and Short-Ripened Cheeses Sold on the Italian Market, Microorganisms 11(2):521paper