[theme music] NARRATOR: Take some milk,
add a little bacteria, some mold, maybe a few mites. STEVE JENKINS: Cheese is just a
means of a controlled spoilage. NARRATOR: And you get a delicacy
that people can't get enough of. From pasture to pizza,
from Roquefort to Velveeta, no matter how you
slice it, or spray it, it's one of humankind's most
complex and cherished foods. Now, "Cheese," on
"Modern Marvels." [theme music] The trucks begin arriving before
dawn, gleaming, steel tankers, each one hauling 6,000 gallons
roll into the off-loading bays. It is a refinery of sorts,
but the commodity here isn't oil or natural gas, it's milk. This is the Alto Dairy
in Waupun, Wisconsin. KURT HEITMANN: A typical day,
there's about 3 and 1/2 million pounds of milk that
come into the plant, so there's about 70 truckloads. NARRATOR: The Alto Dairy
takes those 3.5 million pounds of milk and begins turning them
into 400,000 pounds of cheese every day. 90% of the milk produced in
Wisconsin goes into cheese, and fully 10% of
Wisconsin's cheese gets made here at Alto, the
largest cheese plant east of the Mississippi. From giant factories
to small farms, making cheese is an art,
a science, and a craft. It's also a relationship between
land, animal, and technique. STEVE JENKINS: The
human being is just another one of the four,
five, or six factors that are integral to the science
and art of cheese making. NARRATOR: At the Alto Dairy,
as with any cheese factory, good cheese begins with a
pure, consistent milk supply. First thing he does
when the truck falls in is the intake guy
opens up the top cover and gets a sample
of the milk out. It's to check for antibiotics. Once the lab clears it,
they'll hook the hose on, and they'll start
to unload the truck. NARRATOR: The dairy pumps the
milk into giant holding silos. When a batch of cheese
begins, the milk heads to the pasteurizer
where it's quickly heated to about 162
degrees Fahrenheit, killing any bacteria. Then it's on to the
cheese making vat. Ironically, the next
and most crucial step in making any cheese-- from a creamy, fresh cheese
to an aged Parmesan-- is adding bacteria, the
so-called good bacteria known as the starter culture. KURT HEITMANN: We have to
put good bacteria back in, and that's the starter
culture we just dumped in. And with that starter
does is the bacteria start to eat the lactose
or the milk sugars. NARRATOR: As the bacteria, aided
by moderate heat and agitation, consume the sugars and
ferment them into lactic acid, they lower the pH
balance of the milk. This will eventually
give the cheese it's acidic, tangy flavor. The pH drop also prepares the
milk proteins to coagulate. This particular batch of milk
is destined to become cheddar, so before the milk
is coagulated, the cheesemakers add a
vegetable dye called annatto to give the cheddar its
trademark orange color. The actual coagulation is made
possible by a miraculous enzyme known as rennet. Although today's cheesemakers
often use rennet synthesized from vegetable sources,
it was originally taken from the stomach
lining of ruminant animals, such as cows and sheep. In just 30 minutes, a
mere drizzle of rennet turns this giant vat of milk
into a yogurt-like mass. KURT HEITMANN: In
55,000 pounds of milk, we're using about
70 ounces of rennet. It doesn't take much. NARRATOR: Automatic
knives then carefully cut through the solid
portion, known as curd, and expel the liquid,
known as whey. This is another universal aspect
of cheese making at dairies large and small. The size of the curds
will determine the texture and moisture content
of the cheese. The finer the curd size, the
more whey that's expelled. Cheddar is cut very
fine, which will lead to a dry, firm cheese. KURT HEITMANN: We'll then
wash the curd, which lowers the temperature so the
bacteria will slow down, plus it removes some
of their food source by washing out some lactose. And then we will
salt the cheese, and the salt, again, is a
way to not only flavor it, to help give it the flavor, but
helps to control the bacteria. NARRATOR: The curd is piped
to the cheese-press area where it will fill
one of these forms, known in the trade as a
640, since it will form a 640-pound block of cheese. The box is then pushed
into the drainer presses, and it's allowed to
stand for five minutes. After the five
minutes of stand time, now the drainer
press is lowered. The entire press will then
tip down for whey drainage. Each individual box is pressed
for about eight minutes with 55 pounds of PSI. NARRATOR: This
hydraulically-powered machine is an industrial version of
the cheese press, a simple tool used by cheesemakers
for thousands of years to shape the curd
and press out whey. The forms are further
pressurized in a vacuum chamber. Over time, the curd pieces
fuse into what we'll recognize as cheddar cheese. Meanwhile, deep
inside the cheese, the starter bacteria continue
to break the milk sugars into tangy lactic
acid and proteins into sharply-flavored
volatile compounds, gradually importing
flavor to the cheese. And that's what the process
of this controlled spoilage of making cheese is all about,
having those molecules break down into simpler
and simpler molecules so that the cheese
can take life. NARRATOR: Most of the aging
will have to take place away from Alto Dairy, which ripens
the cheddars in cold storage for only 10 days before moving
the giant blocks out the door to its wholesale customers. And so goes this high
volume, high tech version of a classic English
farmhouse cheese. This is an English
farmhouse cheddar. This is a New York cheddar. All cheddar, really, is white. All cheese, really,
starts out white. And keep in mind, Cheddar
was a town in England. Our tradition of making
cheese, a great deal, comes from the
English, and that's why we make a lot of cheddar
here in the United States. As a matter of fact, we make
more cheese here in the United States than any other country. NARRATOR: Which is saying
something because the world makes a lot of cheese. From Munster to mozzarella,
ricotta to Roquefort, the world's cheesemakers produce
20 million tons of the stuff in a year, more than all the
world's tobacco, coffee beans, tea leaves, and
cocoa beans combined. But cheese cannot be
measured in volume alone. It's an enduring obsession,
a seductive pleasure, whether it's a pungent
slice of Brin d'Amour or a bite of a cheeseburger. As a portable
protein-filled food, it's also a key element in
the story of human survival. STEVE JENKINS: We
can authenticate that there was cheese making
going on in the Basque country 3,000 BC, and
certainly in the area that we know now as Turkey, and
Iran, Syria, probably thousands of years before
the Basque country. But the most concrete
example that we have is that residue that
archaeologists found in an earthenware pot in what we
know now as Egypt in 2,300 BC, somewhere between
2,300 BC and 3,000 BC. It was carbon dated. NARRATOR: Somewhere between
scholarly historical conjecture and legend is the theory
the cheese making began by accident, thanks
to nomadic shepherds who happened to carry their milk
in a bag made from the stomach of a goat or sheep. NORBERT WABNIG: As they
carried it with them, the milk would react, for
example, to the stomach lining, which has the rennet in
it, and cause the curd to separate from the whey. And what they're left with
are those little curds. And if you pack that
together, that's cheese. And very little has changed
in that 5,000, 6,000, 7,000, 8,000 years. It spread because it is food. It's a very durable food. NARRATOR: An ounce
of cheese contains seven times the protein of an
ounce of milk and five times the calcium. Cheese also delivers
a concentrated wallop of fat calories, 40% to 50% of
its non-water weight is fat. Ancient cheeses were
made predominantly from the milk of that hardy
travel companion the goat. JENNIFER BICE: They've been
herded for over 7,000 years and were one of the first
animals to be domesticated, so I believe that probably
means that goat cheese was some of the first cheese
made in the world. NARRATOR: In Homer's
"Odyssey," the founding epic of western civilization,
Odysseus's great foe, the cyclops, is, in
fact, a cheesemaker. He curdles his goat's and
sheep's milk into curd, drains the cheeses in
tightly-woven baskets, and even cave ages them. Handcrafted goat
cheeses continue to thrive not only in Greece
and across the Mediterranean region, but also at the
Redwood Hill Farm in Northern California. JENNIFER BICE: Today,
we're making Feta. In our traditional vat here, we
have the 1,000 gallons of milk that we started
with this morning. We've added the
beneficial cultures. Then we added the rennet, and
you can see now that it's not really milk any longer,
it's a coagulated mass that's like a giant
piece of tofu or jello. NARRATOR: The cheesemakers cut
the curd into relatively large cubes and separate
it from the whey. NORBERT WABNIG: Right now,
we're putting the curd into the molds, and you
can see we're packing it in so it will continue to
knit together and become one piece of cheese. With Feta, we don't
add any pressure, it's just the pressure of
the curds and the knitting together. They'll get turned
at the end of today and drain on the
other side overnight. And then tomorrow
morning, they'll be put in a sea-salt brine. NARRATOR: Cheeses value as
a lightweight, long lasting survival food increased as
ancient Mediterranean cultures, particularly the Romans,
perfected the art of making large wheels of
salty hard cheese that would last indefinitely
and were easy to transport. STEVE JENKINS: There were
a lot of Roman centurions and soldiers that had to be fed,
and cheese was an integral part of their diet. So the Romans,
wherever they went, they took herds of cows,
or goats, or sheep, or stole whatever ones were
there when they got there, and they would milk
them and make cheese. The most predominant Roman
cheese has always been, and is now, a very hard, and
dry, and oily sheep's cheese that we call Romano Pecorino,
meaning a cheese made of sheep's milk
from the Rome area. NARRATOR: Other great Italian
hard cheeses, like Grana Padano and Parmigiano-Reggiano,
have been made continuously for 1,000 years,
and probably longer. The Romans weren't the only
ones to make giant wheels of firm, aged cheese. As early as the 11th century,
high in the Swiss Alps, cow herds passed the
summer in isolation, grazing their cattle
on sweet mountain herbs and producing large
blocks of hard cheeses, like Gruyere, which
were essential to get through the long, harsh winter. The Swiss have produced Gruyere
continuously for at least 1,000 years. Their greatest innovation,
though, was full of holes. So why are there
holes in Swiss cheese? And how did some
hard-drinking medieval monks create some of the world's
best and stinkiest cheeses? Step inside a
world-class cheese store, and you also enter a living,
breathing historical record, a pungent library of the
world's great cheeses in all their glorious
eccentricity. Whether it's in California's
celebrity-friendly cheese store of Beverly Hills-- We did it, Epoisses
from Burgundy. NARRATOR: --or the bustling
Fairway Market 3,000 miles away in New York City. I'm asking if this
Saint-Andre is ripe. I don't put it
out if it's ripe. Yeah? NARRATOR: Cheese mongers Steve
Jenkins and Norbert Wabnig have been introducing Americans
to Europe's cheese traditions for over 30 years. STEVE JENKINS: What else today? What are you doing with
that boring piece of Brie? NORBERT WABNIG: You can almost
grade any good cheese store by the smell when
you walk in the door. If it doesn't have a
really pungent odor, you're not in the right place. NARRATOR: Cheese becomes stinky
thanks to the work of bacteria and molds, which break
down fats and proteins into volatile compounds
that pack a powerful odor. The stinkiest cheeses were
created by a medieval Trappist and Benedictine monks who
brought great creativity to the final stage
of cheese making-- ripening. STEVE JENKINS: These are
stinky cheeses because they're washed-rind cheeses. These guys learned that if
they would rub the surface of the cheese-- and mostly
these were cow's milk cheeses-- be it water, or brine, or
wine, or beer, or brandy, or grape juice, that would
feed the natural bacteria that were on the outside of that
cheese, naturally from the air and from the milk inside. NORBERT WABNIG: The
monks acted as a bridge from the ancient world
into the medieval world, and they kept alive
this making of cheese. And they turned it,
really, into an art. This is a traditional Trappist
cheese made, literally, by the Trappist monks. It's called Mont des
Cats, and this is about as close to the original
recipe as there is. And what the monks would
probably eat with this are some dried meats, a lot of
ale, and a couple of prayers. NARRATOR: Trappist and
other monastic cheeses, which date from as early
as the 6th century, are the ultimate guys
food, a meal designed to go with really strong beer. STEVE JENKINS: A fresh
cheese wouldn't have made it, wouldn't have been so
good with those beers. A rock-hard, dry,
chalky cheese wouldn't be as good with those beers. They came up with a recipe where
cheese was stinky, and gooshy, and excruciatingly
delicious in order for it to stand up to the black bread,
and the really strong beers, and other stuff that they ate
it was so lusty in those days. NARRATOR: Another legacy
of the Trappist recipe is the famously odoriferous
Limburger cheese. At the Chalet Cheese Co-op
in Monroe, Wisconsin, master cheesemaker Myron
Olson makes Limburger in the same handcrafted
manner that the company has used for over a century. Once the curd is formed,
it's hand salted, then sent off to the
ripening cellar where it gets its trademark bacterial smear. MYRON OLSON: What we're doing
is putting a bacteria water onto the surface of the cheese. It's a mixture of water,
salt, and a special bacterial, linens, and then he's rolling
them and smearing each side, each end of the cheese. The bacteria will start to
grow, breaks down the protein of the cheese, causes it
to go from a very acidity, crumbly type of cheese
to where it becomes soft. It softens on the outside of
the cheese and works its way in. NARRATOR: Limburger is not
necessarily the smelliest of washed-rind cheeses. Perhaps it's the type of
smell that people remember. Limburger's brother
bacterium linens is the same bacteria
that's partially responsible for human body odor. Chalet Cheese has
been propagating this same bacterial culture on
the pine boards of its curing cellars since the early 1900s. Today, Chalet Cheese is the
only company making Limburger in the United States. But in the early 20th century,
Limburger was hugely popular. MYRON OLSON: I've heard
figures that at one point, there was up to
10 million pounds Limburger consumed in a year. We currently make
1 million pounds, and that's enough to keep
everybody in the US happy. NARRATOR: If you think
a bacterial smear is an unsavory way
to ripen a cheese, you might want to stay
away from Mimolette, which has a rind that's seasoned
by the dander and excrement of burrowing mites. NORBERT WABNIG:
This is Mimolette. This was Charles De
Gaulle's favorite cheese. And when we turn it over,
they allow the mites to eat into the rind. Again, this is tradition,
and may, in fact, have some effect on the flavor. The cheese, oddly
enough, is quite mild and is somewhere between
a cheddar and an Edam. NARRATOR: A much more
commonly used organism for ripening cheese is mold. The white rind on the
great soft-ripened cheeses like Brie and
Camembert, all mold. But go ahead and take a bite. The mold on cheese is
cultivated carefully, nothing like the type
growing in a musty basement. The French have been
around a long time, and they've eaten a lot
of mold in their day. NARRATOR: In the
same family as Brie, these bloomy rind goat cheeses,
known as Crottin and Camellia, are maturing at the
Redwood Hill Farm. Early in the process,
cheesemaker Jennifer Bice added a Penicillium
candidum mold to the milk. During the ripening
stage, that mold migrates to the
surface of the cheese, since it needs air to live. The cheeses are turned so that
gravity will evenly distribute the butter fat. JENNIFER BICE:
This the aging room where the Camellia are aging. And you can see now that we
have Penicillium candidum mold growth. The mold grows on the cheese,
and then the mold actually composts the cheese
from the outside in, and that's why in
Camembert and Brie, we have it running
around the edge. And it works its way until
the complete inner heart of the cheese is ripe
and runny as well. NARRATOR: The most
famous moldy cheeses are the blue-veined varieties,
like England's Stilton, Italy's Gorgonzola, and especially
France's Roquefort, the legendary sheep's milk blue,
aged in the Roquefort caves and spiked with mold taken
from locally grown rye. Roquefort is a particular
blue made in the Aveyron region of France. It's pure sheep's
milk, and it has to be aged in the
caves at Roquefort. There's a certain point
that the cheese is spiked. Spikes are pulled
out, air gets in, and the blue begins to blossom. It's a particular blue mold
called Penicillium roqueforti Roquefort is totally unique. It tastes like no
other blue cheese. NARRATOR: Another unique
cheese icon simply goes by the name Swiss
in North America, but it's Swiss creators
call it something else. This is Emmentaler. Emmentaler is made
in Switzerland in the town of Emmental. The Swiss make one,
and there's also one made on the other side
of the border in France. But the real one is this one. It is about 200
pounds when it's made. NARRATOR: It's
killing you, isn't it? OK, so where do the
holes come from? What we do back when we're
first making Swiss cheese is we add a special
bacteria to it. It's called a
propionic bacteria. NARRATOR: The propionic
bacteria, which occur naturally in the milk, thrive in the
unusually warm aging rooms. A warm room is held at
between 70 and 80 degrees. And as it warms the cheese,
this propionic bacteria will start to grow, and
they'll form little colonies. These colonies will start
producing carbon dioxide, and as carbon dioxide
goes out to the cheese, it starts pushing
like a balloon. And the longer it's left
in this warm condition and the more the colonies
grow, the bigger the eyes get. This bacteria also
imparts a flavor to the cheese that becomes
part of what we consider a Swiss flavor. NARRATOR: Flavor, after all,
is what cheese is all about. And for millions
of cheese lovers, it doesn't get any
better than this. Welcome to the world
of processed cheese. Processed cheese
can be many things, from uniformly square
slices to creamy sauces. But essentially,
it's cheese that's been melted down,
homogenized with the help of non-cheese
ingredients, and reformed. The end product has longer
shelf life than natural cheese, melts more evenly, and can
be produced more cheaply. This process can be
seen at Winona Foods in Green Bay, Wisconsin, which
makes a number of processed cheese products, including a
squeeze-bottle cheese sauce, and its Painted Cow
brand of cheese in a can. Processed cheese begins
with natural cheese, in most cases, cheddar or Colby. Here at Winona, 40-pound blocks
of white cheddar are shredded. The aim is to create
as much surface area as possible for the chemical
transformations that will take place in the blender. TERRY STEINMANN: This blender
is 6,000 pounds, therefore it will produce approximately
12,000 cans of finished product today. We add cheddar cheese
to the blender. We also add emulsifiers,
whey powder, fat, and water to blend into the
slurry mix that will make a homogeneous blend
or processed cheese base. NARRATOR: The key ingredients
in any processed cheese are the emulsifiers, food
additives that disperse fats and prevent their separation
from proteins, even when melted. This will give processed
cheese its smooth texture. What I'm holding
here is emulsifying salt that's typically used in
processed cheese manufacture. It can be trisodium phosphate,
trisodium citrate, disodium phosphate, disodium citrate. It's added at the beginning of
the process, and what that does is it breaks the fat
globules down into smaller, little fat globules that
will end up being dispersed throughout the cheese matrix. NARRATOR: The ingredients are
simultaneously melted down and agitated, the other
crucial steps in reconstituting the cheese matrix. And it makes almost a plastic,
homogeneous mass in the cooker, and it's very, very
hot at that point. NARRATOR: From now on,
the processed cheese will remain smooth
and homogeneous. And whether it's a processed
cheese spread or a slice, it will have
supreme meltability. The first processed cheese
was introduced in 1915 by the man who would go on to
impact the history of cheese more than any other individual-- James L. Kraft. Kraft's cheese career
began in Chicago in 1903 when he invested $65
in a horse and cart and began peddling
cheese to local grocers. But Kraft wasn't satisfied
with the available product. BECKY HAGLUND TOUSEY: There
was not a lot of consistency, in terms of flavor and the
quality of the cheese that was being produced at that time. And there was also a
problem with the short shelf life of cheese. NARRATOR: In 1911, Kraft
began experimenting with a heat-sterilized cheese
that could be sold in a can. But the heating caused the
fats and proteins to separate. Eventually, Kraft discovered
that constant stirring and the use of emulsifiers
solved the problem. Kraft soon landed a contract
to supply the US Army with 6 million pounds of
the non-perishable cheese during the first World War. And this was a significant
contract that really helped J.L. Kraft develop the business. NARRATOR: The business
quickly became an empire. By 1923, J.L. Kraft was running
the largest cheese company in the world. Then in 1928, Kraft introduced
the soft, golden, processed cheese loaf with
the malleolus name-- Velveeta. BECKY HAGLUND TOUSEY: What
was unique about Velveeta was the fact that the whey
byproduct was put back into the cheese while
it was being made, and what the
scientists found out was that it produced a cheese
with an unusual, creamy texture. And an additional benefit
was the nutritional benefits that Velveeta offered. NARRATOR: Incredibly,
by 1930, 40% of all cheese eaten in
America was made by Kraft. Kraft engineers also introduced
all the major technologies used to make processed
cheese, including the continuous, screw-driven
cookers still used today. As if that weren't enough,
a Kraft scientist also revolutionized the
surprisingly high-tech art of making cream cheese. JIM DURKIN: In the
1940s, Oscar J. Lincoln invented the centrifugal
separation process for cream cheese, which
allowed us to separate the whey from the cream cheese in
15 seconds versus the hours that it had previously taken. He also invented a
unique heating process which allowed us to extend
the shelf life of the product to 120 days. NARRATOR: Cream cheese is a
natural, not-processed cheese. But making a perfectly creamy
schmear is far from simple, and it's done without
the use of cream. The key is using bacteria
to carefully manipulate the electric charges
present in the milk. Those charges normally, in
milk, are all negative charges, or enough of them
are negative charges. And so like charges repel. They don't like to come
close to each other, and they repel each other. That keeps them
stable, and that's why milk stays a
liquid and not a gel, until the bacteria come along
and produce some acid that changes some of
these charge groups on the protein to
positive charges. And now, they start to
get attractive and start to stick together. NARRATOR: When the
charges are balanced, the mixture congeals into a
perfectly-creamy state, not runny, not stiff. At that point, it's quickly
heated, killing the bacteria and creating cream cheese. In 1940, Norman Kraft, James's
younger brother designed the unique chill-roll system to
make a product he'd envisioned for years-- pre-sliced cheese. BECKY HAGLUND TOUSEY: The
heated, processed cheese would flow on to a large,
refrigerated cylinder, what was called a chill
roll, and so it would create a sheet
of processed cheese that was very quickly chilled. And that sheet was
then cut into ribbons, and then the long ribbons
were cut crosswise into sandwich-shaped
squares that were then stacked in stacks
of eight slices, usually, and then wrapped
and packaged in that way. And it sounds simple,
but it was really quite innovative at the time. NARRATOR: The
design breakthrough is still the method for making
processed cheese slices. When the product was
finally unveiled in 1950, it became a sensation,
and then a staple. Its familiar blend of cheddar
with dairy and non-dairy ingredients even became
known as American cheese. Today, individual cheese
slices are still a hefty slice of Kraft's business. JIM DURKIN: On an
annual basis, Kraft produces about 7.2 billion
American slices a year. And my rough
calculations would have that stretching, end-to-end,
stretch around the Earth about 14 times. ANNOUNCER: Kraft's Cheez Whiz,
for dozens of cheese dishes and snacks fast. It's a brand new idea
in food, entirely different from anything
you've ever had before. NARRATOR: In 1952, Kraft
introduced Cheez Whiz, a high-moisture processed
cheese spread made with additional stabilizers. ANNOUNCER: This
tantalizing, pasteurized, processed cheese spread
is grand in any sandwich. JANE HILK: Cheez Whiz
is primarily, here in the States, used
as a topping cheese, as a sauce for
vegetables, potatoes. Broccoli and potatoes are
really the way that's it's used. NARRATOR: Over the
years, processed cheese has taken some
hits to its image. Critics argue that it's greatly
limited the American palate while putting the squeeze
on natural cheesemakers, but it continues to thrive. It's even earned the
admiration of at least one world-renowned
cheese connoisseur. I mean, I grew up on Velveeta. I love Velveeta. I mean, a Dr. Pepper, and
a peanut butter sandwich, and a big slab of
Velveeta, some comic books, and I'm a happy boy. NARRATOR: To countless
millions of people, happiness is a hot pizza,
or a cool Caprese salad. The secret to happiness? It's the cheese. Just ask her. Quick, what's the most popular
cheese in the United States? Cheddar? American? Guess again. That's right. Thanks almost entirely to
our undying love of pizza, the once obscure Italian
cheese known as mozzarella has stretched its
way to the top. It's hardly surprising when
you consider that Americans eat about 100 acres
of pizza per day. Over a year, that's enough
to cover every square inch of Manhattan with pizza, twice. And so back at
Wisconsin's Alto Dairy, they make pizzeria-grade
cow's milk mozzarella around the clock. KEN DEMAA: We make approximately
250,000 pounds of mozzarella per day. On an annual basis, that
comes to 96 million pounds in a year's time. And to put it on pizza terms,
we produce enough mozzarella per day to cover 500,000 pizzas. NARRATOR: Mozzarella is
known as a pasta filata, or stretched-curd cheese. A machine called a
cooker-stretcher heats the curd to 136 degrees, melting it. Constant mechanical pulling
turns the melted curd into a stretchy mass. KEN DEMAA: When it leaves
the mixer and cookers, it's got this massive,
stringy texture to it. And that's what
people like to see. NARRATOR: The hot curd
is molded into blocks. To preserve mozzarella's
soft, springy texture, the blocks are gently coaxed
into a cool, salty canal. The four-hour brine bath halts
the cooking and fermentation. Once cooled, the
blocks of mozzarella are packaged and aged
for about a week. Much of the cheese then takes
a run through the shredder and into a vacuum-sealed,
five-pound bag. The next stop is a 500-degree
oven at your local pizzeria. To create a slightly browned,
perfectly stretchy mozzarella, the cheesemakers not only have
to melt and stretch the curd just so, they must also
guide the starter bacteria into breaking down the
tightly-bound milk proteins, called casein, as
well as calcium. DEAN SOMMER: Because calcium is
the glue that holds the casein structure together in cheese,
if you don't remove some of that glue with
acid during the make procedure, the fermentation,
the proteins are held tightly, and they can't stretch and flow. If you remove all of it,
then it just falls apart. Here's how we would quantify it. We'd put a ruler
by it like this. We'd grab some cheese, and
we'll see how high it goes up before the last strand breaks,
which is right there, which was 13 inches. Try it one more time. Even a more, 16 inches. So we take a number of
readings, average them, and that would give us
our empirical reading for this particular pizza bake. This is pretty close to what
many people would consider an almost perfect pizza. But the only way to really
tell that is to get the human involved to taste it, so-- it's good. Pizza's on, so dig in. NARRATOR: Despite the
runaway popularity of pizza, the essence of this
remarkable cheese remains, fresh
mozzarella di bufala. Say hello to the
Asian water buffalo. This gentle giant, not the
cow, is the original source of authentic, fresh mozzarella. Ever since the gods brought
water buffalo to the Naples region in the
early medieval era, Italian cheesemakers have been
making mozzarella di bufala. GRAZIA PERRELLA: We do not even
know exactly when the tradition started, but we can say that
at least 1,000 year ago, we have traces that water buffalo
mozzarella existed already in the form that it
exists right now. NARRATOR: Water
buffalo milk is prized for its sweet, rich, and
slightly gamey flavor. It's perfect for fresh
mozzarella, which unlike the pizza variety, is
a non-aged, higher-moisture, higher-fat cheese meant
to be enjoyed immediately. A small California
cheese company named Bubalus Bubalus,
after the water buffalo's scientific name, makes 600
pounds of fresh mozzarella every day, about what the Alto
Dairy produces in four minutes. Once the curd enters
the cooker-stretcher, the instincts and timing of
the cheesemaker are everything. HANNS HEICK: He adds about
200 degree of hot water to it so that the
curd will again become soft and stretchable. And then he'll add salt to it. He will stretch it
to the point where he feels that it is good to
form it into individual balls. NARRATOR: The automated
arms of the cooker-stretcher are modeled on human hands,
the traditional tools for stretching and
tearing fresh mozzarella. And this is the precise moment
when you cut the mozzarella, and this is why mozzarella is
called mozzarella because you mozzare, meaning you cut
because mozzare means to cut in Italian. So that's the reason
they call it like that. NARRATOR: Both handmade
and automated methods finish in the same way. HANNS HEICK: They
drop into ice water. The ice water basically, by the
shock of it because the curd is pretty hot still coming
from the cheese mass, it will develop a skin
on the outside, which is kind of typical for
mozzarella mozzarella di bufala. Today, we got a nice
skin on the outside. NARRATOR: Bubalus Bubalus also
makes its own buffalo milk ricotta. Ricotta is unique among cheeses
in that it's made entirely from the discarded whey
rather than the curds. HANNS HEICK: This whey, of
course, which is leftover after we make curd, is still
contains a very large amount, of course, of protein. This way, we then put into a
separate tank, a ricotta tank, where we heat it
up to 198 degrees. And at that point, we add
some salt and some citric acid to it. The protein which
is in that whey still will coagulate
one more time. So that coagulant is
basically ricotta cheese. NARRATOR: While ricotta has been
made out of whey for centuries, the booming whey
industry is just getting started as
cheese forges ahead into a new health-conscious
millennium. For centuries, whey has been
treated mostly as a waste product, once drained from
the valuable cheese curd. Considering that 90% of the
milk used in cheese making will end up his whey,
that's a lot of waste. After all, it was good enough
for a Little Miss Muffet. Today, that whey finds new
life, thanks to operations like the one at the
Alto Dairy which uses a six-story high dryer to
create whey powder at the rate of 250,000 pounds per day. JOEL DENK: This Filtomat is one
of the largest Filtomat dryers in the world, and it will
dry approximate 12,000 pounds of powder per hour. We're essentially spraying
thick whey product that's approximately half
water, half solids. We're spraying it in a stream of
very hot air, approximately 400 degrees. And as that product is
falling through the air, the moisture in it
is evaporating off, and it is converting
it into a powder. NARRATOR: Whey powder
consists of about 12% protein, the rest being mostly
milk sugars and minerals, such as calcium and magnesium. This former waste stream
will become blended into countless prepared
foods, from bread to sausages. Among its many uses, whey
can act as a sweetener or a thickening agent while
providing a central protein and minerals. Whey proteins can be further
concentrated into whey protein isolates, the ingredient of
choice in fitness products. Whey isn't the only food
getting a healthy makeover. Nutritional aspects of cheese
itself are also expanding. There's no getting
around the fact that cheese contains
a lot of fat. That's just the
nature of the beast. But scientists at the Wisconsin
Center for Dairy Research are working with dairy
farmers and cheesemakers to squeeze more nutrition from
that fat by boosting cheese's levels of omega 3 fatty
acids, the healthy fat. JOHN JAEGGI: You can get it
in two different methods. You can get it through
a feeding regiment of feeding dairy cattle
a diet high in flax seed. And what you get is an
elevated level of ALA omega 3 fatty acid. The other way to incorporate
it is something sea generated, either through
fish or algae extracts. NARRATOR: Scientists
have even figured out how to isolate and remove
any trace of a fishy smell. There's also increased
interest in making cheese with beneficial
probiotic cultures, like those found in yogurt. JOHN JAEGGI: It's a big trend
in Europe for a few years, but in the United States, it's
just starting to take hold right now. NARRATOR: Cheese, with
its longer shelf life, is proving to be a
good storage system for these healthy bacteria. Science and technology
notwithstanding, cheese will always be shaped
by the creativity of the individual cheesemaker. Cheese will also
continue to be shaped by the land, and the
animals from which it came. STEVE JENKINS: I find it
amazing that the animal can take on all the
bacteria in the air, and all the yeast in
the air, and the esters from the wildflowers
that it eats, and the esters from the
wild garlics and wild leeks translated through the mammal
lactation, and into the milk, and into the fat, and into the
cheese so that we can recognize them in terms of finished
flavor and what gives cheese its complexity
and its character. I think that's
really interesting. It's magic. It's been around a long time. There's a reason for that. It's good food. God made man. Man made cheese. NARRATOR: And billions
of blissful cheese lovers couldn't be happier.
