🧀 Mozzarella di Bufala Campana

Mozzarella di Bufala Campana is an Italian fresh pasta filata cheese made exclusively from whole, fresh buffalo milk. It has been an EU PDO since 1996 (eAmbrosia file PDO-IT-0014). The milk must come from buffalo reared in the delimited area: municipalities in the provinces of Benevento, Caserta, Naples, Salerno, Frosinone, Latina, Rome, Foggia and Isernia, in Campania, Lazio, Apulia and Molise.

According to the specification, the milk is raw (it may be heat-treated or pasteurised) and must be processed within 60 hours of the first milking. It is acidified with a natural whey starter taken from earlier buffalo-milk batches in the same or neighbouring holdings, heated to 33–39 °C and set with natural calf rennet. The curd is mixed with boiling water, cut or shaped into pieces and hardened in drinkable water, then salted in brine. The cheese is packaged in the same establishment and kept in an acidic protective liquid, which may be salted.

Besides round shapes, the specification allows bite-size, plaited, pearl, cherry and oval ones. Weight ranges from 10 to 800 g; plaits may reach 3 kg. The cheese is porcelain white with a very fine crust about one millimetre thick and a smooth surface, never slimy or flaky. The body is made of thin leaves, elastic in the first eight to ten hours after production and later more flowing. When cut it exudes whitish, milky droplets with the aroma of lactic ferments. The taste is characteristic and delicate. Fat is at least 52 % of dry matter and moisture at most 65 %.

The cheese may be smoked, only by natural traditional methods, and then the designation is followed by the word “smoked”. The packaging carries the PDO logo; if the cheese is made from raw milk, the label must say so. The specification notes that buffalo rearing in southern Italy is documented since the end of the 13th century.