127 728
ediciones
Cambios
sin resumen de edición
In the 1920s, P. Lizarralde learnt from the shepherds of Oñati (G) that a good cheese had to meet the following conditions: not sound hollow, not sweat and not be opened. A good cheese had a thin rind and a buttery crumb; a bad one would fall to pieces on the knife and would become worm-eaten with time.
In the early 20<sup>th</sup> 20th century, it was said that for an ewe to produce good milk, she had to be fed dark grass; but she would need to eat meadow grass for thick and fatty milk. It was thought, and still is today, that the grazing in a sunny area was better than in the shade. Cheese made out of the milk of sheep that grazed on the upland, such as the Urbia (N), Aralar (N and G) and Gorbea (A and B) cheeses, were highly sought after.
In the past, the cheese made up on the high pastureland were kept in caves or even produced there, as was reported in some of our surveys (Gorbea, Ganekogorta-B, Urbia-G and Zuberoa).
On same high pastureland in the Urbia and Urbasa area, it was usual to intensely smoke the cheese and the best way to do so was by burning alder, cherry, birch or similar wood; the important thing was for the wood to be damp as smoke was needed without a flame. That smoking process, which varied in length, turned the cheese first yellow and finally red-black in colour.
== Making sheep’s Sheep’s cheese, ardi-gazta making ==
On the Atlantic side of the watershed and in the northern part at the top of the Mediterranean side, sheep’s cheese was made on the high pastureland. The cheese was sometimes made at the homestead, when the shepherd’s family lived close to the pastureland and it was easy for the milk to be collected after milking; and when the flock was on the winter pastureland down in the valley. Those flocks are mainly made up of Lacha ewes bred for milk, while most of the sheep on the Mediterranean side of the watershed are Rasa or other breeds, kept for breeding and selling meat.
== Contemporary transitions ==
The introduction of the press to get rid of the whey was an important change in cheese manufacturing and it was found nearly everywhere in the Basque Country by the mid-20<sup>th</sup> 20th century. Apart from this innovation, the requirement for hygiene measures and the sale of milk to dairy plants led to the disappearance of the wooden tools and their progressive replacement by metallic ones.
Nowadays, cheese is now only made for the household’s use in many places and the milk produced sold to large dairies. It was also generally reported that cheese used to be salted or put in brine, but now salt is added to the milk right from the start, when making the mixture.
