Making process
To be enjoyed by the costumers, these cheese with peculiar and exceptional characteristics, has to pass through a fuss over process taking care with all the aspects and details that cause this valued product.
Therefore, it is an authentic pleasure to share with you, at least graphically, the most important stages in the Denominations of Origins Idiazabal’s cheese making process.
1) First we heat the pure non-pasteurized sheep’s milk in stainless steel barrels until it attains 30 ºC.
2) We add the rennet (clean, dry, triturated and mixed with salt) that normally comes from suckling lambs, although it can either be vegetable or microbial, and we head it up, always under 37 ºC, to extraxt the maximum amount of serum for conserving the alimentary milk’s substances (fat and proteins) during more or less 30 minutes until it achieves an elastic gel that will be cut with a lyre.
3) We introduce it into the molds, where will be marked with a unique number to control and follow them up, and we put them in a press.
4) After the press we will pass them to the brine, a bath of salt and water, where they will remain 24 hours.
5) Later on we will proceed with the maduration process, which will have to be made at a 10 ºC temperature with a 90% relative’s humidity.
6) The process will take at least two months, that is the Denomination of Origin of Idiazabal’s Cheese established time, although the optimum time is of 4 up to 8 months. The acidity increases along the process, which will contribute to the conservation as it neither contain any artificial colors nor preservative, for being a natural process.
