Skip to main content
Support

Browse by category

All categories
Home

Cheese from Italy, Abruzzo

Ricotta di stazzo

A boundary entry set by heat, not by microbes. At the summer sheep folds of the Abruzzo mountains, the whey left from cheesemaking is heated to at least 80 °C until the whey proteins float up within a few minutes. The flakes are lifted with a perforated ladle into rush or plastic baskets, pressed lightly by hand and sold straight from the fold, unsalted.

Fully documentedCheesePAT (traditional agri-food product, Abruzzo; listed with the formaggi di stazzo)Family: Whey cheese (heat-precipitated whey protein) family

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedNo fixed amounts; the regional sheet stresses that products vary with every herder and every week of the summer season.
Whey left from cheese made at the fold (sheep, goat or cow milk, alone or mixed)[pat-sheet][onaf-sheet]
No salt and no other additionThe ONAF sheet lists no additions and says the ricotta is not salted[onaf-sheet]
StarterHeat sets the whey proteins; no starter or acid is listed in the ONAF sheet, which gives no additions.
Start
Drag the bar or press Play

What changes: Starting material: strained whey from the fold's cheese, heated in a copper cauldron

Step 1 of 4
Filter the whey
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented

The whey left from the cheese made at the fold is filtered to remove impurities.

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

A boundary entry set by heat, not by microbes. At the summer sheep folds of the Abruzzo mountains, the whey left from cheesemaking is heated to at least 80 °C until the whey proteins float up within a few minutes. The flakes are lifted with a perforated ladle into rush or plastic baskets, pressed lightly by hand and sold straight from the fold, unsalted.

Key numbers
Temperatureat least 80 °CReported[onaf-sheet]Heat until the flakes rise

What makes this one different

Made in the rough conditions of the summer folds from whatever whey the day's cheese left, sheep, goat or cow, so no two batches are alike, and never salted.

Abruzzo whey ricotta (nearby product)
Ricotta from Teramana and Saanen goat whey in Abruzzo was made by heating the whey to 87–89 °C without added acid and studied fresh and after 5 days at 4 °C (Florio et al. 2024)
Fold rooms
Stone or brick fold buildings stay at about 10–12 °C without cooling (regional sheet)
Season
May to October, while the flocks are on the mountain pastures
Rind
None; basket marks; cylinder or truncated cone of variable size

Related ferments

Safety

The regional sheet notes the folds often lack running water and use spring water; the ricotta is sold at once rather than stored.

History and sources

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

The regional sheet calls milk processing at the pastures perhaps the oldest food industry known and ties it to Abruzzo's transhumance, saying methods have changed little.

Process times
The sources we found give no figure for how long any of its steps take.
  1. [pat-sheet] Regione Abruzzo, Prodotti agroalimentari tradizionali, sheet «Formaggi e ricotta di stazzo» (copy hosted by ONAF)gov
  2. [florio2024] Florio M., Cimini C., Bennato F., Ianni A., Grotta L., Martino G. 2024, Evaluation of Chemical and Nutritional Characteristics of Ricotta Cheese from Two Different Breeds - The Endangered Italian Teramana Goat and the Cosmopolitan Saneen Goat, Foods 13(8):1239paper
  3. [onaf-sheet] ONAF (Organizzazione Nazionale Assaggiatori Formaggi), technical sheet «Ricotta di stazzo»web
  4. [onaf] ONAF, cheese page «Ricotta di stazzo» (id 334)web