Pasta filata

Pasta filata means the curd was stretched. FAO lists it as its own make path: ripen the curd in the vat, mill, heat, knead and stretch, salt, mould — Mozzarella and other pasta filata cheeses ¹. A cheese that merely melts in a pan is not pasta filata. Mexican queso tipo manchego, in CDR’s comparison, melts without being a pasta filata cheese and will not string the same way ².

Acid and heat make the paste plastic #

FAO uses yoghurt cultures for mozzarella — thermophilic Lactobacillus bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus, with optimum growth they place between 40 and 45 °C — because of fast growth and high acid ¹. Yogurt is a culture cousin, not an identity for mozzarella.

In their small-scale mozzarella notes, the matted curd is cut, turned, and piled until pH has reached 5.1–5.3; the cheese should be “like boiled chicken meat.” Ribbons then go into water at 82–85 °C, rest about 10 minutes, and are kneaded and stretched while hot; salt is worked in; the shape is cooled in ice water ¹. Those figures are FAO’s training procedure, not a universal mozzarella law and not a U.S. identity standard. If the curd will not stretch, the usual causes are pH not in the plastic window, or heat not high enough to mobilize the protein — a make observation, not a recipe dump.

Vat cook in that same note goes to 47 °C with stirring ¹. See Curd and Coagulation.

What to notice #

Hot paste should pull into ropes without tearing into crumbs. Cool cheese should be moist and elastic, not mealy. Flavor is mild lactic when young; this style is often eaten before long Affinage. Salt is mixed into the hot mass in FAO’s note rather than as a cheddar mill ¹; Salting cheese still applies.

Do not invent home stretching times or raw-milk rules. Return to Cheese.