| Stracciatella di bufala | |
| Country: | Italy |
| Region: | Apulia |
| Source: | Italian Mediterranean buffalo |
Stracciatella di bufala (pronounced as /it/) is a cheese produced from Italian buffalo milk in the province of Foggia, located in the Apulia region of Italy, using a stretching (pasta filata) and a shredding technique.[1]
Stracciatella cheese is composed of small shreds—hence its name, which in Italian is a diminutive of straccia ('rag' or 'shred'), meaning 'a little shred'.It is a stretched curd fresh cheese, white in colour, and made the whole year round,[2] but is thought to be at its best during the spring and summer months.This stracciatella is unusual in that buffalo herds and the cheeses made from their milk are much more common on the western side of the Apennines, in Lazio and Campania.
When mixed with thick cream, stracciatella is also used to make burrata: this is a rich, buttery textured cheese, which comes enclosed in a bag of mozzarella and is thought to have been originally created in the early 20th century in Andria, on the Murgia plateau. It is also now made outside Italy, especially in the United States and Argentina.[3] [4] Since neither stracciatella nor burrata keeps well even when refrigerated, these cheeses need to be consumed promptly, while they are still soft and fresh.[5]