Toma Piemontese

Toma Piemontese DOP is a semi-cooked cow's milk cheese made in the provinces of Turin, Cuneo, Biella, Vercelli, Novara and Verbano-Cusio-Ossola, plus some communes of Asti and Alessandria. It has been protected since 1996.

The specification defines two types. Toma Piemontese from whole milk is richer, sweeter and softer. Toma Piemontese semigrassa is made from milk partly skimmed by leaving it to stand so the cream rises; the paste is drier and the flavour more assertive. Both are DOP, and they are best treated as two cheeses rather than two grades of one.

The shape is a cylinder with flat faces and slightly convex sides, 15 to 35 centimetres across, 6 to 12 tall, weighing from under two kilos up to nine. Minimum ageing runs from 15 days for small semi-skimmed wheels to 60 days for the large ones.

By volume it is one of Piedmont's biggest protected cheeses, and its role is that of the everyday table cheese: mild, versatile, on every deli counter in the region. The rennet is calf rennet.

Young whole-milk toma is soft, sweet and buttery, with a clean milky flavour and a springy paste that yields easily. It is deliberately unchallenging: a cheese for eating in slices with bread rather than for studying.

The semi-skimmed version tastes noticeably different: drier, firmer, more savoury, with a hint of sourness that the whole-milk one lacks. Aged four to six months it develops hazelnut and cellar notes and a mild peppery finish.

Alpine toma, made at altitude in summer from raw milk, is where the category gets serious. Wild herbs come through, the paste picks up a golden tint from grass carotene, and the finish lengthens considerably. A supermarket toma and a malga toma from the Lanzo valleys are recognisably the same idea and completely different eating.

Throughout, expect mildness rather than power. Toma is not trying to be Castelmagno, and a toma that tastes sharp and salty has usually been aged past its intent.

Young toma is a slicing cheese: eat it at room temperature with bread and cognà, the Piedmontese preserve of grape must, pears, figs and hazelnuts. With chestnut honey and walnuts it closes a meal without further explanation.

It melts well and does not split, which makes it the cheese for gnocchi alla bava: toma melted with butter and a little milk becomes the entire sauce, and nothing else goes in. It also works over polenta, in vegetable tarts, in cardoon gratins and on hot crostini.

The aged semi-skimmed type can be grated over pasta and risotto and holds up in the oven. In the valleys it goes into agnolotti filling alongside leftover roast meat.

One peasant use worth reviving: diced toma melted into a rice and milk soup, or over crushed boiled potatoes. It costs nothing and it is what the Lanzo valleys have always done with the cheese that was not quite good enough to sell.

Buy it cut and keep the rind on: the rind is the wrapper the cheese made for itself. Wrap the wedge in waxed cheese paper or parchment, leave the cut faces covered and the rind able to breathe, and keep it in the salad drawer, the least cold and most humid part of the fridge. Cling film in contact with the paste makes the surface wet and slick within a day. A young toma holds a week to ten days; an aged wedge, three to four weeks.

What happens in the fridge is drying, mostly at the cut. A young toma loses its spring and the paste tightens; an aged one hardens further at the face and the flavour concentrates towards hazelnut and broth. The rind may darken and take on a damp, cellar smell, which is what rinds do. Take it out an hour before eating, because cold flattens a soft paste completely. Toma does not freeze well in a piece, since the fine eyes collapse and the texture turns crumbly on thawing. The date on the wrapping and the counter that cut it settle anything else.

Toma is a shape and a family, not one cheese: a low flat cylinder with straight sides, 1.8 to 9 kilos, with the DOP wheel carrying its mark stamped into the rind and the words Toma Piemontese DOP on the paper. The rind is thin, smooth and elastic, straw yellow on a young wheel and turning reddish brown with age. Cut, a young whole milk one is white to pale straw, soft and springy with fine scattered eyes; the semi skimmed aged version is firmer, drier and more granular.

Abroad the word gets used loosely, and French Tomme, especially Tomme de Savoie, sits next to it on most counters: that one has a thick grey mould rind and a mustier flavour, and it is a different cheese with a similar name. Within Piedmont, dozens of valley tome exist outside the DOP, sold as Toma di Lanzo, del Maccagno and so on, and they are legitimate but unprotected. If the shop cannot say which milk and how long, ask; the two DOP versions taste quite different. Prices sit at $16 to $28 a pound.

In Piedmont, 10 to 15 euros a kilo at the dairy and 13 to 18 in a shop. Alpine summer toma runs 18 to 28 euros and sells out quickly. Elsewhere in Italy, 16 to 24 euros a kilo.

In the US, Italian importers list it at roughly 14 to 26 dollars per pound; in the UK, 20 to 32 pounds per kilo. Availability is better than for most Piedmontese cheeses because production volumes are substantial.

Ask three questions at the counter, because they define very different cheeses: is it DOP, is it whole or semi-skimmed milk, and how many months old is it. A fifteen-day semi-skimmed wheel and a six-month whole-milk one share a name and little else.

And remember that the mark is not the whole story here. An uncertified summer wheel from a mountain dairy can be better than any DOP wheel in a supermarket, because the denomination defines a standard rather than a ceiling. In the Lanzo valleys, the Biellese and the Ossola, alps sell directly through the summer.

The Lanzo valleys north-west of Turin are the classic ground: Usseglio, Balme and Ala di Stura, where an August show brings the summer's wheels down from the alps and the local toma gets its own weekend.

The Biella hills have their own tradition, with Maccagno and the cheeses of the Cervo valley; the Ossola and the Valsesia make high-altitude tome that rarely leave the province. In the Canavese and the Susa and Chisone valleys, village fairs from September to October are the most direct way to taste production that never reaches a shop.

In Turin, the historic markets are the place: Porta Palazzo, the largest open-air market in Europe, has stalls carrying five or six different tome and they will let you taste.

At Bra, in September of odd-numbered years, Slow Food's Cheese festival gathers producers from the whole alpine arc. Lining up a DOP toma, an unmarked malga toma and a French tomme in one afternoon explains this page faster than reading it does.