Skip to main content
Support

Browse by category

All categories
Home

Cheese from Italy, Piemonte

Toma di Lanzo

Raw cow milk, whole or with the evening milk creamed overnight and added to the morning milk, is set with animal rennet at about 35–37 °C for about an hour. The curd is broken to maize or rice size, sometimes warmed to no more than 42 °C, and formed in moulds or in a natural-fibre cloth alone. It is salted dry or in brine and ripens at least 15 days for small cheeses and 60 days for large ones.

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedThe sheets give no fixed amounts, milk volume or rennet dose. A cheese weighs 3.0–7.0 kg.
Raw cow milk, whole or with the evening milk part-skimmed by letting the cream rise[pat-sheet][onaf-sheet]
Animal rennet, liquid or powder (calf rennet, per ONAF)[pat-sheet][onaf-sheet]
Salt (dry or brine)[pat-sheet]

Total time across the recorded steps: 17 days

Start
Drag the bar or press Play

What changes: Overnight in pans the cream rises off the evening milk

Step 1 of 7
Cream the evening milk
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented

Evening milk may stand in pans until morning for the cream to rise, then joins the morning milk; a whole-milk type is also made.

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 evening milk creamed overnight and added to the morning milk, is set with animal rennet at about 35–37 °C for about an hour. The curd is broken to maize or rice size, sometimes warmed to no more than 42 °C, and formed in moulds or in a natural-fibre cloth alone. It is salted dry or in brine and ripens at least 15 days for small cheeses and 60 days for large ones. Made in 7 steps over 17 days. The longest step, ripen, takes at least 15 days (Regione Piemonte 2015).

Key numbers
Main stepat least 15 daysReported[pat-sheet][onaf-sheet]Ripen
Temperature35–37 °CReported[pat-sheet][onaf-sheet]Set the curd

What makes this one different

Valli di Lanzo toma, some still shaped only in cloth. ONAF says the production rules admit two types, a valley-dairy toma made all year and a summer Alpeggio toma made from 1 June to 15 October from grazing cows, with the milk cheesed above 1200 m. Heating the curd is optional and stays at 42 °C or below.

Rind
Smooth, straw/greyish from grey moulds
Size
3.0–7.0 kg; cylinder ø 20–40 cm, side 5–15 cm

Related ferments

Variants

  • Toma di Lanzo d'AlpeggioMade from 1 June to 15 October from cows fed only on alpine pasture, with the milk cheesed above 1200 m.

Safety

Made from raw milk and ripened at least 15–60 days; the sheet gives no pH or safety limits. The minimum ripening for small cheeses is only 15 days. In a study that deliberately added low levels of E. coli O157:H7 to raw milk for Cheddar and Gouda, counts fell during ageing, but it was still detectable after selective enrichment past 270 days. The authors suggest that 60 days alone does not eliminate it in those cheeses. ANSES advises pregnant women, young children, people over 65 and people with weak immunity to avoid raw-milk cheeses other than cooked pressed ones such as Gruyère or Comté.

History and sources

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

ONAF's sheet says the first news of the cheese goes back to 150 AD, when the Roman-Turin family gens Vennonia sent slaves to graze in the Ala valley, where they made cheese and butter. It says Pantaleone da Confienza wrote of this toma in 1477, and that the cheese is named after the market town of Lanzo, where two weekly markets gathered the valley tome until the early 1900s before they went on to Turin. It adds that Count Francesetti's early-1800s letters on the Lanzo valleys record this trade, that Luigi Clavarino's 1867 survey of the valleys treats the production of tome, and that the Milone brothers' 1911 book gives data showing the production was then much higher than today.

Starter
The sources we found do not say how its fermentation begins.
Microbes
No study we found names its microbes.
  1. [anses2022] ANSES 2022, Fromages au lait cru, quels risques pour la santé et comment mieux les prévenir (8 April 2022)gov
  2. [damico2010] D'Amico D.J., Druart M.J., Donnelly C.W. 2010, Behavior of Escherichia coli O157:H7 during the manufacture and aging of Gouda and stirred-curd Cheddar cheeses manufactured from raw milk, Journal of Food Protection 73:2217–2224 (abstract)paper
  3. [pat-sheet] Regione Piemonte, D.D. 24 July 2015 n. 460, Schede tecniche prodotti agroalimentari tradizionali (BU 38S1, 24/09/2015), category D product 35 'Toma di Lanzo' (copy hosted by ONAF)gov
  4. [onaf-sheet] ONAF (national organisation of cheese tasters), technical sheet 'Toma di Lanzo'web
  5. [onaf] ONAF, cheese page 'Toma di Lanzo' (id 478)web