Day Trip to Parma - Part 1: Cheese Factory Tour

I've had the opportunity to take a few day trips lately. (I would make a Beatles reference here, but I'm afraid of the negative connotations if I declared myself a day tripper.) My favorite cooking instructor, Lucas, has recently ventured into the world of travel trips. I've now done two of them, and today I'm writing a brief recap of our trip to Parma, which is known both for its cheese and its ham. Parmigiano and Prosciutto! What's not to love? We also went to Modena for a tour and some balsamic vinegar tasting.

Map of official Parmagiano-Reggiano region

Gotta keep it sanitary

We hopped on a bus around 0700 and were at the cheese factory well before 1000. That was the high point of my trip. Our group of about forty people donned clean paper booties, hair nets, coats, and face masks and then went up to the primary cheese-making area. All Parmigiano cheese is heavily regulated by a regulating body or consortium, and the milk must come from local cows of a certain type. It can only be produced in certain provinces: Parma, Reggio Emilia, Bologna, and Modena. Even more impressive, the cheese must be started within two hours of milking, which occurs twice a day. The evening milk is left out to start separating, and the skim milk along with whey from the day before is added to the morning milk and used for the cheese. Each vat takes 1,000 liters of milk to make each wheel of cheese. When we got there, the milk and whey mixture was already in the vats, to which rennet had been added. The milk mixture is heated - twice - and within half an hour of the second cooking a cheese ball is formed.

Heh, cheese ball.

We got to stand over a railing and watch the artisans work the cheese. Our group was with another tour group, and we all jostled for good positions at the rails so we could see what was going on. A pair of artisans used paddles and cheesecloth to lift out the cheese balls, which were then tied to a wooden board to drip dry for a few minutes. Shortly after that, the workers came back around with a knife to split the ball into two smaller pieces, which were tied off to the same wooden board. I noticed that two of the artisans looked very similar, and I turned to the lady next to me and said, "Do you think those two are brothers?" She looked at me and responded in French. Proudly resurrecting my high school french from the dregs of my memory, I said, "Sont freres?" I must have said it poorly, because she looked confused and pointed me to her tour guide. That's when I looked around and realized my tour group left me! Whoops.

Cutting the cheese, hee hee

I quickly extricated myself from the French tour group, and went back to the main hallway. My group was nowhere to be found! So I walked down another hallway, all the way to the end, and poked my head into the only open door, which was an office. So I turned around and went back to the main deck, and still, no group. I texted Lucas, and then was debating whether or not to strip off my paper clothing and go outside to the gift shop, when fortunately I saw someone open a sliding bay door. Eureka! I saw faces I recognized, and slipped into a room with wheels of cheese laying out on boards. I missed most of the guide's speech, but I gathered the cheese didn't stay in that room for very long - just long enough to get labeled with the maker's information, date, and batch number - before moving next door for brining.

Brining

Real, official Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese only has three ingredients: milk, rennet, and salt. The salt isn't added during the original cooking process; it is added during the brining phase. The wheels spend approximately one month in brining tubs before moving to the warehouse for again. I learned each wheel gets turned approximately every hour, so that it absorbs the salt evenly. The cheese rinds, by the way, are entirely edible. They are awfully hard though, which is why most people don't eat them. However, that doesn't mean they go to waste in Italian homes! The cheese rinds are often added to soups and even lasagna crusts to add a little extra umami flavor, and then removed just prior to eating.

After the brining phase, the cheese wheels are brought to the warehouse for aging. Each wheel, about 35 kilograms, agest anywhere from 12-36 months. During the process, they are rotated and scraped down several times a day; there's a special forklift-looking machine specially made for going up and down the rows and flipping and scraping the cheese, to ensure they are aging evenly and staying clean. Our guide told us each wheel is worth roughly 500 Euro, and I did a quick rough count in the warehouse: 17,000 wheels of cheese, with lots of room for more! The rinds are stamped "Parmigiano-Reggiano" and dated, but they don't receive the official seal until they are just about ready for market. The cheesemakers use a very high tech tool - a hammer - to listen to the wheels. They are so practiced at this that they can determine whether a wheel has air pockets in it just by sound. Air pockets can mean the presence of bacteria, but it doesn't mean the cheese is bad. It does mean it can't be sold as official Parmigiano-Reggiano though, so those words on the label are scored through once. If after more aging there are still unexpected air pockets, the words are double-scored so that they are no longer readable. This cheese is just sold as "Italian Cheese" and though it is of a lesser quality, it is still delicious.

Left: Parmigiano-Reggiano Right: Cheese that didn't pass inspection and will be sold as lesser quality

Stacks of cheese in the warehouse next to a cheese-flipper machine

After finishing our tour of the warehouse, we went to the gift shop. I promptly purchased a cheese knife (traditionally, Parmigiano-Reggiano is cut with an almond-shaped blade), a ceramic cheese bowl, a new microplaner, and 1/2 kilo of 24-month and 1/2 kilo of 36-month cheese. When I got home that night, I made a big batch of ziti and topped it off with a mozzarella and Parmigiano-Reggiano mixture. Deeeeelicious.

I found the wikipedia page for Parmigiano Reggiano to be pretty informative, and surprisingly I retained a lot of the information our tour guide told us. I guess I pay pretty good attention when it concerns food. ;)