Pecorino Toscano

Pecorino Toscano is a sheep's milk cheese made in Tuscany, plus a few neighbouring towns in Umbria and northern Lazio, in cylindrical wheels of 750 g to 3.5 kg. The DOP recognises two types: soft paste (pasta tenera), aged a minimum of 20 days, and semi-hard paste (pasta semidura), aged a minimum of four months and often six to eight.

The milk is coagulated with calf rennet at 33-38C. That is the technical decision that defines the cheese. Pecorino Romano and Fiore Sardo use lamb rennet paste, which carries lipase enzymes that split milk fats and generate a sharp, peppery bite; calf rennet does not, so Pecorino Toscano stays sweet-tempered even when it is old.

Salting is short (hours or a day or two, in brine or dry) where Pecorino Romano is rubbed with coarse salt for eighty to a hundred days. The finished cheese carries a fraction of the salt.

The rind may be treated during ageing with olive oil, wood ash or tomato concentrate. The red-rinded wheels in Tuscan shop windows are not flavoured: that is a centuries-old surface protection, and the paste underneath tastes of nothing but sheep's milk.

The soft type tastes of warm milk and fresh grass, with a gentle lactic tang, a supple, almost springy texture and a clean sweet finish. There is nothing sharp in it at all. If your reference point is a young Manchego, imagine that with less oil and more freshness.

The semi-hard type at six to eight months is nutty and savoury, with hazelnut and toasted-bread notes, a whisper of lanolin that reads as sheep rather than farmyard, and a mild warmth on the finish that stops well short of pepper. It flakes rather than bends.

Either way, the salt sits in the background. Tuscan bread is famously made without salt, and the local pecorino was built to sit on it: a cheese that seasons the bread instead of fighting it.

Slice the soft type thickly and put it on bread with olive oil, honey or fresh broad beans. It melts well and without stringing, so it belongs on hot schiacciata, in baked crostini, over roast vegetables and inside a frittata.

Grate the semi-hard type. In Siena, pici cacio e pepe is made with aged Pecorino Toscano rather than Romano, which is why the Tuscan version is creamier and much less salty: the technique is the same, off the heat, with warm pasta water worked into the cheese first. It also goes over ricotta-and-spinach tortelli, into meatballs, into savoury custards.

The single best thing to do with either type takes two minutes: cut a slice a centimetre thick, sear it thirty seconds a side on a very hot dry pan, and serve it with chestnut honey and cracked pepper.

Whichever type, take it out of the fridge half an hour before serving. Cold sheep's cheese has almost no aroma, and this one trades on aroma rather than on salt.

A vacuum-sealed wedge keeps at 4 to 8 C to the date on the pack, which is the dairy's reference. After that the two types part ways. The fresh one holds a lot of water and begins to sweat: wrap it in greaseproof paper, never cling film laid against the surface, and reckon on about two weeks once it is open. The semi-hard goes two to three months wrapped in a barely damp cloth and then paper, kept in the vegetable drawer, which is the least cold part of a domestic fridge.

What happens over those months is steady drying. The cut face hardens and turns glassy, and a millimetre taken off with a knife gets you back to the paste underneath; as water leaves, the salt concentrates, the flavour sharpens and the texture moves from sliceable towards gratable. Dry white or green bloom on the rind lifts with a cloth dipped in vinegar or white wine, and anything else on the surface is a question for the shop and the label. Freezing suits only semi-hard pieces headed for the grater, 200 g at a time, up to six months.

The label has to say Pecorino Toscano DOP and carry the Consortium mark, an oval with the name and a stylised sheep. Whole wheels also show a numbered casein plaque and an inked stamp applied after the conformity check. In the soft type the paste is white and gives under a finger, with sparse regular eyes; chalky or spongy means the acidification went astray. In the semi-hard the paste is straw coloured, cuts into slices that stand up without folding, and shows a few small eyes.

Three labels at the counter are not the DOP: pecorino toscano in lower case, which states origin and nothing else; pecorino di Pienza, a prestigious local usage that is not protected and is often, not always, made inside the Tuscan rules; and Pecorino delle Balze Volterrane DOP, which is a separate denomination with its own. Outside Italy the bigger trap is the word pecorino on its own, which in most delis means Pecorino Romano: far saltier, much harder, built for grating, and usually the cheapest sheep cheese on the counter. The Tuscan one is a table cheese and behaves nothing like it.

Pecorino Toscano is one of the better-distributed Italian DOP cheeses abroad. In the US, Whole Foods, Eataly, Murray's Cheese and Italian delis carry it at roughly $12 to $20 per pound; large Tuscan cooperatives such as Il Forteto and Busti export consistently, and their semi-hard wheels travel well.

In the UK, expect £20 to £30 per kilo from Italian delicatessens, La Fromagerie, Ocado and online importers. Supermarket labels sometimes read simply 'Pecorino': check for Pecorino Toscano DOP, because Romano, Sardo and Toscano behave completely differently.

Ask which of the two types you are being sold: American and British counters frequently sell both under one name, and the difference between a 20-day and an 8-month wheel matters more than the price. On whole wheels look for the Consorzio's oval mark and the numbered casein plate set into the rind.

Pienza, in the Val d'Orcia, is the pilgrimage. Its Fiera del Cacio takes place on the first Sunday of September and includes the cacio al fuso, in which wheels are rolled around a spindle planted in the piazza. Dairies in the surrounding Val d'Orcia and Crete Senesi sell directly and often let you watch the morning make.

The Maremma around Grosseto is where most of the milk is: Manciano, Sorano, Pitigliano, Roccalbegna. Many of these dairies were founded by Sardinian shepherding families who moved to Tuscany from the 1950s onwards, and several run tastings.

Volterra is worth the detour for a different cheese entirely: the Balze Volterrane DOP, made with raw milk and cardoon rennet. In the Mugello and the Casentino, north of Florence, long-established cooperatives keep shops open year-round.