Elaboration of cheese from La Mancha

Milking and milk cooling.

 Proceed to extract milk from the udders of sheep, manually or mechanically, then filtered and placed in cooling tanks to lower its temperature to 4 ° C.

Coagulation and cutting of the curd.

Milk is moved to curdling vats, where it is curdled using natural rennet or other coagulating enzymes. For this process, the milk is heated to 30 ° C and maintained at that temperature for 45 minutes. The curd obtained is subjected to successive cuts to get small grains similar to rice.

Draining of the curd.

The mass is stirred and heated gradually to 37 ºC in order to facilitate the removal of the liquid part or serum.
Molded.

The curd is put into cylindrical molds that have reliefs for printing the "flower"the flat faces of  cheese  and on the lateral surface the "pleita".

Cheese ID 

During this operation it proceeds to the placement of the casein plate, its serial number that identifies each individual cheese.

Pressing

Once the curd is in the molds,it  is subjected to pressing to facilitate the removal of the serum inside the mass.

Turned around

After a period of time in the press, the curd  is removedfrom the mold (has already acquired a cylindrical shape) and inverting the position of the flat faces of the cylinder,it  is reinserted in the mold to be a new pressing process.

Salty

The next process is salting by immersion.It is used sodium chloride and the duration is between 24 and 48 hours.

Drying and maturation.

The pieces of cheese remain in locations with an adequate moisture to remove the excess of water. Then they are introduced in chambers with controlled temperature and humidity to facilitate the proper cheese ripening.