🧀 Stracchino

Stracchino, also called crescenza, is a soft white Italian cheese made from pasteurised milk.

The Vetrina Toscana product page lists stracchino as a product of the Maremma hinterland, mainly the municipality of Sorano in the province of Grosseto, Tuscany. It is made with starter cultures and rennet from authorised suppliers. After coagulation the curd is broken several times and the paste is poured into moulds, which are stacked and turned repeatedly until the acidity is right. The cheese is then immersed in brine and matured in a cold cell at 4 °C.

Scientific papers describe crescenza as an Italian soft cheese with a short maturation. In an industrial-scale test reported in Frontiers in Microbiology, cow's milk was heat-treated, set at 38 °C with starter and liquid rennet, the curd was cut into 3 cm cubes and placed in square moulds with 20 cm sides, held for 4–5 hours at 22–24 °C, immersed in 1% brine for 2–3 hours and matured for 3–7 days. In laboratory-scale cheesemaking reported in Foods, whole fresh milk was pasteurised at 73 °C for 16 seconds, set with Streptococcus thermophilus and rennet, and the cheese was immersed in 15% brine for 45 minutes. Its shelf life was about 20 days; commercial crescenza samples had 55.5–61.3% moisture.

The paste is white, soft and creamy, with a fresh, delicate taste and a slightly sweet aroma. It is mostly packed in blocks of 250 g and eaten as a fresh cheese or in appetisers with meats and vegetables. Production in Sorano is small, about 50 quintals a year, mostly sold to distributors outside the area.

Stracchino or stracciatella? Stracchino is a whole cheese, white and soft with a creamy paste, made from pasteurised milk set with starter and rennet, moulded and brined. Stracciatella, by contrast, is the filling of burrata: shredded pasta filata mixed with cream, a different process. Stracchino or crescenza? The Tuscan product page treats them as one cheese under two names, and scientific papers describe crescenza as a soft cheese with a short maturation. So when a recipe asks for one, a pack sold under the other name is the same kind of cheese.

Packs may carry the name stracchino or crescenza, so read both words; the paste should be white, soft and creamy. Check the ingredient list for pasteurised milk and rennet, and the date, because this is a fresh cheese: in one laboratory test its shelf life was about 20 days. It is mostly packed in blocks of 250 g. You will find it in the chilled cheese section of a supermarket, at a delicatessen or at an Italian food shop.

Stracchino belongs to Fresh cheeses.