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About the Nice White Brine Cow’s Cheese
How does our white brine cheese differ from the other kinds of cheese?
Our cheese is from the group of the so called semi-hard kinds of cheese. As its name also suggests it is preserved and matures in brine. Its characteristic taste is another part of significance, in consequence of the used rennet keeps and yeasts.Bulgariais famous for ite lactic acid bacteria, which are isolated directly from the nature and give the specific taste to the traditional Bulgarian dairy products. The white brine cheese is saltier. The balance of the contents of salt is of significance with it. If the contents of salt are lower, the cheese will get soft and its taste will deteriorate, and with higher levels the products becomes „branny“, i.e. with slightly granular and crumbling structure.
How shall we get to know the good or the genuine white brine cheese?
The nice white brine cheese is moderately hard with slightly elastic structure, i.e. it is cut into well shaped pieces, without crumbling or falling apart. Good cheese is smooth with single pores. The availability of a lot of pores is a sign of bacterial contamination or of poor processing.
Cow’s cheese has a milky cream color. Excessive whiteness is due to additional bleaching with natural or synthetic bleachers. And naturally the taste. The product should have a rich bouquet, i.e. specific taste and fragrances characteristic of this kind of cheese. When the cheese is not mature enough, it has rather the taste of milk than of cheese.
What does it mean for cheese to be mature or not?
The matruration of the cheese is analogous to the aging of the wine. The process of maturation passes leaving it at a temperature of 10 degrees for 30 to 40 days. Complicated enzyme processes take place at that which disintegrate the lactic casein and form the structure of the cheese. With immature kinds of cheese, the curd hardens artificially for a much shorter time period. Such kinds of cheese are cheaper, they have the taste of cottage cheese and dissolve at temperature processing. They also do not have this formed cheese taste and fragrance.
You mentioned the price. Does high price always mean good quality?
I advise people not to buy suspiciously cheap kinds of cheese. The traditional white cheese is produced of 7 l of milk and matures for 30 to 40 days, which does not allow low prices of the end product. Moreover that there are differences in the price of the raw milk in conformity with the category. ОМК works with raw milk only of the first category with good indicators. This guarantees the highest price of the production and the good taste of the cheese. My other piece of advice is to check up the quality after each purchase, because it is possible that there are differences in the individual batches of the manufacturer. The permanent quality is also the quality of a good kind of cheese.
And finally we got to Vereia cheese, which is new for the Bulgarian consumer. How does it differ from the other trademarks on the market?
Vereia is not a new product. Obedinena Mlechna Kompania AD (United Dairy Company JSC) has been producing cheese since 1959, but we have mainly exported our kinds of cheese to other markets in the last few years. Vereia cheese is produced in conformity with an original Bulgarian technology of maturation and has all the needed qualities characteristic of the genuine white brine cheese – a rich bouquet of taste and fragrance, moderately hard, with smooth non-crumbling structure.
