Cheese, Kashkaval

⚠ UNTESTED. A briefing.

Kashkaval — kaşkaval, caşcaval, кашкавал — is the Balkan and Anatolian aged member of the stretched-curd family, and it is the one that will surprise anybody who thinks pasta filata means mozzarella. It is a firm, keeping, sliceable, faintly sharp cheese that eats like a hard cheese and is made by pulling hot curd.

⭐ And its name carries its own history. Kashkaval descends from the Italian caciocavallo — literally “cheese on horseback,” from the way pairs of cheeses were tied together and slung over a pole to hang. The word travelled east along the same routes the technique did, and it is now the everyday cheese of a dozen countries that do not otherwise agree about much.

The diagnostic detail, and the reason this is the hardest recipe in the batch: it is a two-day make. You make a curd, let it acidify overnight as a solid mass, and only then scald and stretch it. The stretch is on day two, on a curd that has been ripening without you.

Ingredients

• 1 gallon whole milk — sheep’s milk if you can get it, cow otherwise (not ultra-pasteurised)
• 1/8 tsp thermophilic culture
• 1/4 tsp calcium chloride solution, if the milk is shop-bought
• 1/2 tsp liquid rennet, single strength, diluted in 1/4 cup cool unchlorinated water
• Saturated brine, calcium-adjusted — see Cheese Brine, Saturated
• Water at 170-180 F for scalding and stretching

Directions

Key ingredients

Salt

1. DAY 1 — make an ordinary curd. Ripen at 90-95 F / 32-35 C with a thermophilic culture for 45 minutes. Rennet at floc multiplier 3, cut to 1/2 inch, and raise to 105-110 F / 40-43 C over 30 minutes, stirring. Hold until firm.
2. Drain and press the curd into a single slab, then leave it somewhere warm — 65-72 F / 18-22 C — overnight, 12 to 24 hours, covered.
3. ⭐ This overnight rest is the whole difference from mozzarella. You are letting the mass acidify slowly and evenly all the way through, which a two-hour mat cannot do, and it is what gives kashkaval a body that survives months rather than days.
4. DAY 2 — test before you commit. Cut a piece and try it in 175 F water. It should draw smoothly. If it tears, give it a few more hours; if it shreds, you have gone too far and it will make a fine crumbly fresh cheese instead.
5. Slice the slab thin and scald it. Cut the matured curd into strips, put them in a bowl, and pour over water at 170-180 F. Work it until it comes together into one smooth, glossy, elastic mass.
6. Form a wheel, not a ball. Press the hot mass into a mould and let it cool under its own weight, smoothing the surface so there are no folds or trapped air — this one has to survive months, and a seam is where it will fail.
7. Brine. Saturated, calcium-adjusted, cold — 8 to 12 hours per pound.
8. Dry it 2 to 3 days, then age at 50-55 F / 10-13 C, 80-85% RH for 2 to 6 months. Turn it weekly and wipe any surface mould with brine. Wax or vacuum-bag it after the first month if you would rather not do the weekly rind work.

Notes

Where this recipe came from — and what it isn’t 🔴 UNTESTED, and it is the most demanding recipe in this batch — a two-day make with an unattended overnight acidification, which means the one variable you cannot watch is the one that decides it. ⚠ Several regional kashkavals are protected or regulated in their own countries; this is a home kashkaval-style cheese rather than any of them.

The name, which is the best thing on this page ⭐ Caciocavallo is Italian for “cheese on horseback,” and the usual explanation is the way two cheeses were tied at the neck and straddled over a pole to hang and dry — so they sat astride it like a rider. From that word come Romanian caşcaval, Bulgarian and Macedonian кашкавал, Turkish kaşar/kaşkaval, Serbo-Croatian kačkavalj and Greek κασκαβάλι. One Italian word for a way of hanging cheese became the name of the everyday cheese across half of southeastern Europe.

Sheep versus cow The traditional Bulgarian and Romanian versions are sheep’s milk and are noticeably sharper, whiter and firmer than the cow’s-milk versions now common. Sheep milk has substantially more fat and protein than cow’s, so expect a higher yield and a denser paste if you can get it — and expect it to behave differently, not just taste different.

Still open I have not established when the technique reached the Balkans, or whether it went east with Italian traders, north with Ottoman movement, or both. The word’s path is documented; the cheese’s is not, at least not in anything I have read.

Read alongside /cheese/makes/pasta-filata/ and /cheese/world/eastern-europe-balkans/ on the site.