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Cheese from Italy, Lombardia

Formaggella della Val Brembanaformagela

Raw cow milk, whole or with the first milking skimmed by hand, is warmed to 34–36 °C and set with liquid calf rennet. The curd is broken gently, then heated to 40–42 °C while it is broken to hazelnut size, and packed into small moulds. It is dry-salted and ripened 25–30 days, or up to 60 days for an aged cheese.

Fully documentedCheese25 days – 2 monthsTraditional food product (PAT, Lombardia)Family: Uncooked or semi-cooked pressed cheese family (tomme, Saint-Nectaire, Reblochon, Morbier, Raclette)

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedThe sheet gives temperatures and times but no batch size or doses. A cheese weighs 1.5–2 kg.
Raw cow milk from one or two milkingsTradition calls for whole milk from one milking; the first milking may be skimmed by hand[lombardia-pat]
Liquid calf rennet[lombardia-pat]
SaltRubbed on dry[lombardia-pat]

Total time across the recorded steps: 25 days – 2 months

Start
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What changes: Starting material: raw cow milk, sometimes with the cream skimmed off one milking

Step 1 of 7
Collect and skim the milk
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented

The milk of the first milking may be skimmed by hand; tradition uses whole milk of one milking. Output: raw cow milk, whole or part-skimmed.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

Raw cow milk, whole or with the first milking skimmed by hand, is warmed to 34–36 °C and set with liquid calf rennet. The curd is broken gently, then heated to 40–42 °C while it is broken to hazelnut size, and packed into small moulds. It is dry-salted and ripened 25–30 days, or up to 60 days for an aged cheese. Made in 7 steps over 25 days – 2 months. The longest step, ripen, takes 25 days – 2 months (Regione Lombardia 2008).

Key numbers
Main step25 days – 2 monthsReported[lombardia-pat]Ripen
Temperature34–36 °CReported[lombardia-pat]Warm and set with rennet

What makes this one different

Formagela means "little cheese" in the local dialect. It is a small, semi-cooked, dry-salted wheel of raw milk, eaten at one or two months, while the valley's Branzi is a larger mountain cheese.

Rind
Thin, smooth, ivory to straw, darker with age
Size
Cylinder 18–22 cm across with a convex 5–8 cm side; 1.5–2 kg
Season
Made all year

Related ferments

Safety

Made from raw milk and ripened only 25–60 days. The sheet notes that a sour taste can come from making faults. ANSES names Listeria, Salmonella and enterohaemorrhagic E. coli as the main raw-milk cheese hazards. It advises pregnant women, people over 65, people with weak immunity and young children not to eat raw-milk cheeses, except cooked pressed ones such as Comté.

Hazards the sources name: Staphylococcus aureus and its enterotoxins, not measured in this cheese. In a survey of 123 raw or thermised milk Alpine cheeses, including Formagella and cheeses from Bergamo, S. aureus was not detected in 52 % of samples taken before ripening, and two semi-hard cheeses with a top heat of 37–43.6 °C held enterotoxin.

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

Val Brembana cheeses were known as far as Venice. In the 1600s the Venetian governor Alvise Priuli had a road built through the valley to the Valtellina, around the Duchy of Milan's tolls, and the trade it brought helped the valley.

Starter
The sources we found do not say how its fermentation begins.
  1. [lombardia-pat] Regione Lombardia, Schede prodotti agroalimentari tradizionali, Annex B to DDUO no. 3392 of 7/4/2008, 'Formagella della Val Brembana'gov
  2. [onaf-sheet] ONAF (national organisation of cheese tasters), technical sheet 'Formaggella della Val Brembana'web
  3. [onaf] ONAF, cheese page 'Formaggella della Val Brembana' (id 990)web
  4. [turri2021] Turri F. et al., 2021, High biodiversity in a limited mountain area revealed in the traditional production of Historic Rebel cheese by an integrated microbiota-lipidomic approach, Scientific Reports (doi 10.1038/s41598-021-89959-x)paper
  5. [berger2025] Berger T.F.H. et al., 2025, Critical Factors Affecting the Prevalence of Staphylococcus aureus and Staphylococcal Enterotoxins in Raw Milk Cheese in the Alpine Region of Austria, Italy, and Switzerland, Foods 14(13):2176paper
  6. [anses2022] ANSES 2022, Fromages au lait cru, quels risques pour la santé et comment mieux les prévenir (8 April 2022)gov