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Cheese from Poland

Twarógtwaróg

Twaróg is a fresh Polish acid curd cheese made by souring cow milk with lactic bacteria. In the Polish specification for smoked twaróg, whose early stages make the acid curd that is later salted and smoked, pasteurised milk is soured at 20–30 °C for 12–18 hours to below pH 4.65, then the curd is cut, warmed, drained and pressed. Farm twaróg is made from raw milk soured naturally by its own bacteria.

Fully documentedCheese38 h – 45 hFamily: Fresh lactic (acid-set) cheese family

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedThe process values come from a Polish application specification for smoked twaróg (Twaróg wędzony), a related product whose early stages make an acid curd that is then salted and smoked. The specification gives no culture dose. About 60 % of the milk volume is drawn off as whey. No source read here gives a recipe for plain commercial twaróg.
Cow milk, pasteurised at 74–80 °C for 45 secondsIn the smoked-twaróg specification the milk is standardised to at least 3.5 % fat (self-pressed) or 1.6 % (pressed)[twarog-tsg]
Mesophilic lactic cultures, as a direct-set inoculumIn the smoked-twaróg specification[twarog-tsg]
Raw cow milk, soured by its own bacteria with no added cultureHow the farm twaróg in the Łódź study was made[maciejewska2025]
Startermesophilic lactic acid bacteria (direct-set culture)

Total time across the recorded steps: 38 h – 45 h

Start
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74–80 °C

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

Step 1 of 5
Pasteurise and cool the milk
Time
0.8 min
Reported
Temperature
74–80 °C
Reported
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Lactic acid bacteria
Lactococcus lactis
L. pseudomesenteroides
L. delbrueckii
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

Twaróg is a fresh Polish acid curd cheese made by souring cow milk with lactic bacteria. In the Polish specification for smoked twaróg, whose early stages make the acid curd that is later salted and smoked, pasteurised milk is soured at 20–30 °C for 12–18 hours to below pH 4.65, then the curd is cut, warmed, drained and pressed. Farm twaróg is made from raw milk soured naturally by its own bacteria. Made in 5 steps over 38 h – 45 h. The longest step, chill and keep cold, takes up to 24 h (Specyfikacja produktu będącego gwarantowaną t…) and runs at up to 15 °C (Specyfikacja produktu będącego gwarantowaną t…). Mesophilic lactic acid bacteria (direct-set culture) in the smoked-twaróg specification, which names no species and Lactococcus lactis, Leuconostoc pseudomesenteroides and Lactobacillus delbrueckii, the main species in four raw-milk farm twaróg-type cheeses from Łódź Voivodeship do most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main stepup to 24 hReported[twarog-tsg]Chill and keep cold
Temperatureup to 15 °CReported[twarog-tsg]Chill and keep cold
AciditypH 4.2–4.3Measured[godula2018]Chill and keep cold

What makes this one different

Soured by lactic bacteria, then cut, warmed slowly and pressed in cloth until it holds less than 70 % water.

Milk
Pasteurised cow milk in the specification; raw cow milk on the farms studied
Ripening
None; twaróg is an unripened acid cheese
Water
Below 70 % after pressing (smoked-twaróg specification)

Related ferments

Variants

  • Raw-milk farm twaróg (Łódź Voivodeship)Raw milk is filtered through cheesecloth and left at 20–25 °C until it sets by itself, usually within 24–26 hours. The curd is cut and drained in cheesecloth at 12–15 °C for 12–14 hours (Maciejewska et al. 2025).

Safety

In four raw-milk farm twaróg-type cheeses from Łódź Voivodeship, Salmonella and Listeria monocytogenes were not detected, but coagulase-positive staphylococci reached about 3.1 log CFU/g in one cheese and 6.0 in another, so the authors stress strict hygiene. Above 5 log, the study notes, EU hygiene rules call for a test for staphylococcal toxins, and it did not test for them. Four cheeses cannot show that raw-milk twaróg is free of Listeria or Salmonella, and it is eaten fresh with no ripening. ANSES advises pregnant women, young children, people over 65 and people with weak immunity to avoid raw-milk cheeses other than cooked pressed ones such as Gruyère or Comté. The smoked-twaróg specification keeps the pressed curd's water below 70 % and chills it below 15 °C within 24 hours. A storage study kept retail twaróg 21 days at 5 ± 1 °C and rated its storage stability adequate, but it measured acidity, water, texture and taste, not germs.

Hazards the sources name: Coagulase-positive staphylococci, found in two of four farm cheeses (about 3.1 and 6.0 log CFU/g); Salmonella and Listeria monocytogenes were not detected in any.

History and sources

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

Chudy and Makowska (2014) say the Slavs probably kept cattle by the 6th century BC and that twaróg was the first product made from milk. They cite a recipe for twaróg in Karolina Biełozierska's 1889 cookbook. German-run dairies opened in Chełmża in 1875 and Poznań in 1881, and Poland had 4,176 dairies in 1929. Exports of twaróg to East Germany began in May 1958, with 1,300 tonnes that year and 5,342 tonnes in 1960. Production rose after the Second World War to a record 405,000 tonnes in 2013.

  1. [anses2022] ANSES 2022, Fromages au lait cru, quels risques pour la santé et comment mieux les prévenir (8 April 2022)gov
  2. [twarog-tsg] Specyfikacja produktu będącego gwarantowaną tradycyjną specjalnością 'Twaróg wędzony' (Polish application specification for a TSG, published on gov.pl)other
  3. [godula2018] Godula K, Dmytrów I, Mituniewicz-Małek A, Mulawka E (2018). Stabilność przechowalnicza twarogów tradycyjnych i bezlaktozowych. Żywność. Nauka. Technologia. Jakość 25, 4 (117), 140–149, doi:10.15193/zntj/2018/117/265paper
  4. [maciejewska2025] Maciejewska N., Szosland-Fałtyn A., Bartodziejska B. et al. 2025, Assessment of Bacterial Communities in Raw Milk Cheeses from Central Poland Using Culture-Based Methods and 16S rRNA Amplicon Sequencing, Foods 14(24):4288, doi:10.3390/foods14244288paper
  5. [chudy2014] Chudy S., Makowska A. 2014, Twaróg i ser smażony – wczoraj i dziś (Twaróg and fried cheese, yesterday and today), Zeszyty Wiejskie 20, pp. 167–175, doi:10.18778/1506-6541.20.09paper