The Natural Whey Starter Used in the Production of Grana Padano and Parmigiano Reggiano PDO Cheeses: A Complex Microbial Community †
Erasmo Neviani, Giuseppe Comi · 2024
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Description
The authors review the living starter that gives two famous Italian cheeses their character, in a 2024 paper. Grana Padano and Parmigiano Reggiano both start with whey saved from the day before's make. That whey ferments overnight and seeds the next vat, a hand-me-down method called back-slopping. Heat-loving milk bacteria rule the mix, in many species and strains at once.
The mix is the point: the starter acts as one community, not a sum of lone cells. Its breadth lets it cope with the small shifts of farmhouse cheese making, where no two days match. Passed vat to vat for ages, the starter forms a living bond between cheeses across time. The review gathers fresh work on who lives in the starter, how they act together, and why the old method endures in guarded cheese names.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Erasmo Neviani, Giuseppe Comi |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2024 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 30 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |