Burrata di Andria

Appearance & taste

Burrata di Andria has the shape of a roundish pouch with the typical, sometimes small, closure at the top. It is milk white and weighs 100 g to 1 kg. The casing of stretched curd is about 2 mm thick or thicker.

Inside is a stringy, spongy mass soaked in cream; the strands vary in length and thickness. When it is cut open, cream flows out. The specification describes the cheese as aromatic, with pleasant notes of fresh or cooked milk, butter and cream. There is also a lactose-free variant.

As a highly perishable fresh product, Burrata di Andria is kept at 4 °C (± 2 °C). It is available in pouches tied at the top, wrapped in green paper, or in trays, tubs or cups, also in a covering liquid.

Production

Cow’s milk is used, raw or pasteurised. The cream is obtained from centrifuged milk or from fresh whey and pasteurised; packaged UHT cream is also allowed.

The milk is first made into stretched curd (pasta filata). Part of it is pulled by hand into irregular strands, the “lucini”, and mixed with cream – hence the name Stracciatella, from stracciare (to tear apart). This filling is put into a hand-formed casing of stretched curd, which is closed at the top. All steps up to the finished cheese take place in Apulia, and packaging is done at the production plant.

Origin & history

According to oral tradition, Burrata was invented on a farm by Lorenzo Bianchino in the first decades of the 20th century. Because of heavy snowfall he could not take the milk to town and had to process it himself, above all the cream that formed by itself. The model was the “Mantèche”, casings of ripened curd in which butter was kept. Bianchino mixed the leftovers of the stretched curd with cream and wrapped them in a casing of the same curd – in keeping with the farmers’ aversion to waste.

According to the specification, Burrata di Andria was first mentioned in 1931 in the Touring Club guidebook. Since then Italian newspapers have reported on it again and again. In 2000 it was included in the first list of traditional products of the Apulia region.