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Cheese from Greece and Cyprus

KefalotyriΚεφαλοτύρι

Kefalotyri is a hard, salty cheese of sheep or goat milk, or both, from Greece and Cyprus. A study of a semi-industrial make calls it a cooked hard cheese, and one artisanal make was ready to sell as a hard cheese at 90 days. Makes range from raw sheep milk with no starter to thermised milk with a native starter.

Fully documentedCheese3 monthsnone (a non-PDO Greek cheese)Family: Hard pressed ewe cheese family (Manchego and Pecorino Romano as templates)

Recipe

Kefalotyri, a photo from Wikimedia Commons
Photo: J.P.Lon, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
No fixed amounts recordedNo fixed recipe and no amounts in the readable sources. The 65 °C and 90-day values come from one semi-industrial make of thermised sheep milk (Bosnea et al. 2025, abstract) and one artisanal raw-milk make (Pappa et al. 2021, abstract).
Sheep or goat milk, or a mixtureRaw sheep milk in one artisanal mountain make; thermised (65 °C for 30 s) in one semi-industrial make[pappa2021][bosnea2025]
Starter cultureNone in the artisanal raw-milk make; a native Streptococcus thermophilus and Lactococcus lactis starter in one semi-industrial make[pappa2021][bosnea2025]
Starternone in an artisanal raw-milk make; a native Streptococcus thermophilus and Lactococcus lactis starter in one semi-industrial make

Total time across the recorded steps: 3 months

Start
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65 °C

What changes: In one semi-industrial make the milk is thermised at 65 °C for 30 s first

Step 1 of 4
Thermise the milk
Time
0.5 min
Reported
Temperature
65 °C
Reported
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
S. thermophilus
Lactococcus lactis
Lactic acid bacteria

Output: thermised sheep milk.

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

Kefalotyri is a hard, salty cheese of sheep or goat milk, or both, from Greece and Cyprus. A study of a semi-industrial make calls it a cooked hard cheese, and one artisanal make was ready to sell as a hard cheese at 90 days. Makes range from raw sheep milk with no starter to thermised milk with a native starter. Made in 4 steps over 3 months. The longest step, ripen to a hard cheese, takes 3 months (Bosnea L 2025). Salt is 4.1 % (Pappa E.C 2021). Streptococcus thermophilus ST1 and Lactococcus lactis and Mesophilic lactic acid bacteria and cocci do most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step3 monthsReported[bosnea2025][pappa2021]Ripen to a hard cheese
Temperature65 °CReported[bosnea2025][pappa2021]Thermise the milk
Salt4.1 %Measured[pappa2021]Ripen to a hard cheese

What makes this one different

Kefalotyri is a cooked hard cheese that is not protected by a PDO. In market samples its mean salt is 3.1 %, against 2.1 % in Graviera, and Kefalograviera, a similar Greek cheese, is a PDO.

Milk
Sheep, goat or a mixture
Ripening before sale
90 days for an artisanal hard cheese in one study
Composition
Mean of 17 market cheeses — pH 5.3, moisture 36.8 %, salt 3.1 %, fat in dry matter 49.2 %
Composition of one artisanal make at 90 days
Moisture 40.4 %, fat 28.8 %, salt 4.1 %, protein 23.3 %

Related ferments

Safety

In one artisanal raw-milk make with no starter, a study reports high numbers of enterococci and Enterobacteriaceae, and the authors still judged the hygiene rather satisfactory. A semi-industrial make thermised the milk at 65 °C for 30 s, and its mature cheeses were reported safe; the abstract does not say which pathogens were tested. Kefalotyri is salted; the 90-day artisanal cheese held 4.1 % salt. ANSES names Listeria monocytogenes, Salmonella and enterohaemorrhagic E. coli as hazards of raw-milk cheeses and tells pregnant women, young children, people over 65 and people with weak immunity to avoid them, apart from cooked pressed kinds such as Gruyère or Comté. It does not name Kefalotyri, so do not assume this cooked hard cheese is in that exception.

Hazards the sources name: Enterobacteriaceae, in high numbers in the raw-milk make; the authors judged its hygiene rather satisfactory.

History and sources

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

History
The sources we found do not record its history.
  1. [bosnea2025] Bosnea L., Kosma I., Kakouri A., Paramithiotis S., Samelis J. 2025, Development of a semi-industrial Kefalotyri-type cheese using thermized milk from native Epirus sheep breeds and autochthonous starter and adjunct cultures, Fermentation 11:673, doi:10.3390/fermentation11120673 (abstract)paper
  2. [pappa2021] Pappa E.C., Kondyli E., Vlachou A.M., Kakouri A., Malamou E. 2021, Evolution of the biochemical and microbiological characteristics of mountainous Kefalotyri cheese during ripening and storage, Food Research 5(6):254-259, doi:10.26656/fr.2017.5(6).132 (abstract)paper
  3. [pappa2023] Pappa E.C., Kondyli E. et al. 2023, Compositional differences of Greek cheeses of limited production, Foods 12:2426, doi:10.3390/foods12122426paper
  4. [kamilari2022] Kamilari E., Tsaltas D., Stanton C., Ross R.P. 2022, Metataxonomic mapping of the microbial diversity of Irish and Eastern Mediterranean cheeses, Foods 11:2483, doi:10.3390/foods11162483paper
  5. [wp-kefalotyri] Wikipedia, Kefalotyriwiki
  6. [anses2022] ANSES 2022, Fromages au lait cru, quels risques pour la santé et comment mieux les prévenir (8 April 2022)gov