“Where’s the ricotta?” Jimmy and Carl had got me hooked on this fresh cheese they brought to sell at the Olney Farmers and Artists Market, and then they cruelly stopped bringing it. They gave me some runaround about it being inconvenient to pick it up, blah blah. There was nothing to do but go straight to the source.
The source turned out to be Caputo Brothers Creamery, in Spring Grove, Pennsylvania. It’s 60 miles due north of Olney, not far over the Mason-Dixon Line. North we drove, north to the Spring. When we got there, we found not so much a bosky dell as an enormous pulp wood processing plant. We persisted, though, and found Caputo Brothers on Main Street.
The Latest Model in Cheese
In a refurbished car dealership, David and Rynn Caputo have built an immaculate cheese processing establishment. There is a large room full of shining, industrial vats and implements, a homey dining room, a small retail area, and a cheese aging cave for the small percentage of fresh cheese that doesn’t go out the door as ricotta and mozzarella. They also sell “Capomozz,” cheese curds ready to stretch into mozzarella by home and professional cooks. It doesn’t come fresher.
Shiny Cheese Making Equipment
Skimming Off the Ricotta
The Mozzarella Corner
Rynn Shows Us the Aging Cave
The cave is full of their Provola, Provola Piccante, and other aged cheese. The Vecchio Ricotta Salata has won an American Cheese Society award. Recently, the Slow Food organization asked them to produce a small batch of Rogusano, a traditional cheese now endangered in Italy. It was such a success at the cheese show that they are now in the process of lining up the regulatory licenses for commercial production.
In addition to cheesemaking, the Caputos host Farm Table dinners and tours of Italy showcasing the traditional foods of various regions. Information about these events and much more can be found at their website.
When I told them that their ricotta was the best I have ever tasted (albeit I have never been to Italy), Rynn knew why: Caputo is the only cheesemaker in this country that makes it the artisanal way, by culturing the milk instead of using vinegar to make it coagulate faster. The process starts at 4 a.m. every day, and they were just finishing up as we watched, at around noon. Rynn told me that in Italy, people know to show up at cheesemakers when the ricotta is just finished, and can be seen sitting in their cars eating bowls of the warm cheese.
Then Rynn and Mark Severn, the Director of Sales and Operations, brought out a little of each of their cheeses for us to sample. They included some of that brand new ricotta, warm and all, and for me, it was one of the culinary highlights of August. I envied those Italians! All the other cheeses were excellent, as well, especially the ricotta salata.
Rynn and Mark Prepare the Tasting Samples
And Proudly Posing
The non-vinegar method of ricotta production is not the only thing that sets Caputo apart from other U.S. cheesemakers. They source their milk from local farms, which must adhere to the Animal Welfare Approved Standard. They even haul the milk from the farm to their factory in their own truck, to be sure that it’s kept pristine. They make 200,000 pounds a year, and it’s so popular that every pound is pre-sold.
Late summer is a time of reduced milk production for cows, but the source material should be more plentiful soon, so here’s hoping that there will be a more reliable supply at OFAM in the near future! I’m sure Jimmy and Carl are one of the smaller retail outlets Caputo deals with, but they have customers eager to consume that wonderful cheese.
