Skip to main content
Support

Browse by category

All categories
Fermentation Atlas

Cheese from Spain, Catalonia

Formatge serrat (queso serrat)formatge serrat d'ovella

A traditional Pyrenean cheese of raw sheep milk, revived by a few makers at the end of the 20th century. Catalonia's food portal describes it as made from spring to autumn and ripened about eight weeks in a cave into a low, firm, close-textured cheese with a thin, smooth, waxy yellow rind and an intense, slightly piquant taste. "Serrat" means closed, for its paste without holes. Made in 5 steps over 56 days – 2 months. The longest step, ripen in the cave, takes 56 days – 2 months (Generalitat de Catalunya 2009).

Key numbers
Main step56 days – 2 monthsReported[gastroteca2009][wp-es]Ripen in the cave
Temperature34–36 °CReported[wp-es]Set the milk

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedTraditional cheese with no fixed batch size or recipe in the sources found.
Raw sheep milk[gastroteca2009][wp-es]
Animal rennet and dairy cultures · Given by the Spanish Wikipedia article; the Catalan food portal calls the coagulation lactic[wp-es]
Salt[wp-es]
Starter: animal rennet with dairy cultures (Wikipedia); the Catalan portal describes a lactic coagulation

Total time across the recorded steps: 56 days – 2 months

Start
Drag the bar or press Play

What changes: Starting material: raw sheep milk from Pyrenean flocks

Step 1 of 5
Collect the sheep milk
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented

Raw sheep milk, traditionally only from spring to autumn.

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

What makes this one different

Serrat is a closed-textured Pyrenean ewe cheese. In the Pallars, wheels that turned out badly were once made into llenguat, a strong fermented cheese paste.

Shape
Low cylinder
Rind
Very thin and smooth, waxy-looking, yellow, with no cracks
Paste
Compact and closed, without holes

Related ferments

Safety

Serrat is made from raw milk and ripened about two months. ANSES advises pregnant women, young children, people over 65 and people with weak immunity not to eat raw-milk cheeses other than pressed cooked ones, because of Listeria, Salmonella and Shiga-toxin E. coli.

Hazards the sources name: Listeria monocytogenes, Salmonella, Shiga-toxin-producing E. coli and Staphylococcus aureus (risks named for raw-milk cheeses).

History and sources

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

The Catalan food portal says a few makers recovered this traditional cheese at the end of the 20th century and that it is made from spring to autumn. Wikipedia adds that it is now made all year, commercially, in the Cerdanya, Alt Urgell and Pallars Sobirà.

  1. [gastroteca2009] Generalitat de Catalunya, Comerç Catalunya, Gastroteca.cat, «Formatge serrat d'ovella» (2009; read via the Internet Archive)gov
  2. [wp-es] Wikipedia (es), «Queso serrat» (outline only)wiki
  3. [anses2022] ANSES 2022, Fromages au lait cru, quels risques pour la santé et comment mieux les prévenir (8 April 2022)gov