Its name already goes back in time and gives the sense (and anticipates the flavor) of an ancient peasant craft tradition. In fact, Canestrato Pugliese DOP owes its name to the peculiarity of its processing: its maturation takes place in baskets, the "fiscelle", handmade by farmers by weaving exclusively the Apulian rush. It is a cheese made from whole sheep's milk with an uncooked pressed paste of a straw yellow color whose flavor and use vary with the passage of time: delicate and faintly flavorful when fresh, with a more decisive, spicy, when you let it mature.
Ancient cheese, linked to the transhumance that the Apulian shepherds of the Murge practiced since the fifteenth century, moving, in the summer months, to the high pastures, via the "Regio Tratturo L'Aquila - Foggia" which linked Puglia to the Abruzzi and which crossed the agri of San Paolo di Civitate, making Canestrato Pugliese a condensed history. In fact, the shepherds moved their flocks from the flat, arid areas of the plain to the high-altitude green pastures of the Abruzzo mountains where the animals, originally the Gentile di Puglia and the Altamurana, fed on aromatic herbs, important for giving milk the characteristic flavor of this cheese: from thyme to dandelion to clover. At that time Canestrato Pugliese was mainly produced by the shepherds themselves or by their wives and this also explains the reason for the fortune, over time, of this cheese which could be eaten fresh, or aged for three months, in communion with broad beans, pears, and vegetables of the summer season, therefore for the poor daily lunches of the working day, or aged and used in the evening in the kitchen grated on orecchiette, on broad bean and chicory purée, an extraordinary dish of the gastronomic tradition of this region, or on the various pasta condiments meat ragout base. In short, a cheese for all seasons. But not produced in all seasons. In fact, the authentic Canestrato, to acquire its unmistakable flavor, can only be worked from December to May, the period of the ancient transhumance, precisely because only in this time the sheep feed on those extraordinary aromatic herbs which give the milk and therefore the pasta their characteristic taste. And in fact an ancient popular saying attributed to Giustino Fortunato, the great historian and thinker of Southernism reads: "If you can beautiful sheep, in summer at Maiella and in winter in Pantanella", where Maiella stands for the mountains of Abruzzo and Pantanella for the Apulian plains. Cheese therefore linked to the extraordinary flavors of its land which, in addition to the typical hint of butter, has aromatic notes that recall ripe apples, field herbs mainly due to the choice of pastures and the microbiological processes of processing with the use of raw milk.
With the DOP, which arrived in 1996, production limits were set to protect one of the most genuine heritages of the Apulian gastronomic tradition since transhumance is now a thing of the past which is only in some cases replaced by the transfer of livestock on of transport and above all since this characteristic cheese entered the menus of great chefs by right and acquired a respectable place in gourmet shops. A very strict disciplinary which provides that "the basic diet of the sheep livestock must consist of green fodder or hay from the natural pastures of the area, with integration of hay and exceptionally simple concentrated feed". The milk – according to the disciplinary – must be “coagulated at a temperature between 38 and 45°C with the addition of only animal rennet in order to obtain the coagulation of the milk within 15-25 minutes. The cheese must be produced with a characteristic technology and in the processing which lasts about 30-60 days in relation to the size and weight of the wheel, adequate pressing must be carried out and suitable molds called "baskets" must be used in order to ensure the characteristic roughness of the rind. The salting can be done dry or in brine and the operation that begins 2-4 days after preparation is carried out in several stages and continues for the entire processing period, during which the cheese always remains in the basket. The maturation period lasts from two to ten months in fresh, slightly ventilated rooms. It is used as a table or grated cheese when it has matured for at least six months".
And also the production and maturing area of the cheese must be included within the administrative territory of the province of Foggia and the municipalities that fall within the province of Bari: Altamura, Andria, Bitonto, Canosa, Cassano, Corato, Gravina di Puglia, Grumo Appula, Minervino Murge, Modugno, Poggiorsini, Ruvo di Puglia, Santeramo, Spinazzola, Terlizzi and Toritto.
First&Food's suggestion:
Company La Calcara
Provincial road 151, Km 27,600 – Altamura
080 314 5365 - 340 1022342
