Activation of wooden vats with selected lactic acid bacteria for the year-round production of traditional Vastedda-like cheese

Vastedda is a pasta filata cheese made from raw ewes’ milk without the addition of starter cultures. Cheese production is carried out in wooden vats characterized by microbial biofilms hosting lactic acid bacteria (LAB) responsible for the acidification of the curds. Vastedda cheese was traditionally produced during the summer season, but it is currently produced throughout the year. In order to minimize production variability, several LAB were isolated from Vastedda PDO cheeses, characterized for their technological potential (Gaglio et al., 2014a) and selected to obtain the best strain combination for the production (Gaglio et al., 2014b). In this study, the multiple strain culture compos…