Original subtitles

- [Adam] Melty and magnificent, creamy and dreamy.

Whether it's mozzarella, Manchego, American, or Swiss,

when you take a snapshot of America's favorite foods,

you gotta say cheese.

Last year, the average American

ate a whopping 40 pounds of cheese.

That's like taking two of the tires on your car,

turning them into cheese, and then eating the tires.

Last year, over 95% of American households bought cheese,

which makes the cheese business

bring in a whole lotta cheddar.

Annual sales last year, topped $34 billion.

Annual production is around 13 billion pounds.

That's almost equivalent to the weight

of a million African elephants.

Cheesemakers around the country are working super hard

to keep up with the demand.

And I wanna know how they do it.

Just like fondue, we're going to immerse ourselves

into all things cheese.

I just wanna do Double Dutch with this

for the rest of my life.

From how it's made

we'll learn how much mac and cheese we eat a year,

the origins of string cheese and why it peels

the way it does.

We'll even find out where Philadelphia Cream Cheese

really comes from.

And we've been granted access to a dark underground cave

in the last place you'd ever expect it

to find out how cheese is aged to moldy magnificence.

This is "Modern Marvels: The United States of Cheese."

[bright electronic music]

[upbeat music]

Today, I'm at Caputo Brothers Creamery,

an artisan cheesemaker, who has been praised

by "Food & Wine Magazine"

and some of the most prestigious restaurants in New York

for their Italian-style mozzarella and ricotta.

Caputo Brothers gets milk from local farms and turns it,

or maybe I should say churns it,

into 6,700 pounds of cheese every week.

That's 350,000 pounds of cheese per year.

And though they deliver all this cheese

to each of the 50 states, they still stay true

to their traditional Italian techniques.

And most of that is done by hand.

So, I figure that this is the perfect place

for some real deal, step-by-step,

hands-on instruction

in how cheese is made.

I'm excited to get started. I'm gettin' hungry.

[upbeat music]

- [Adam] Dave and Rynn Caputo started Caputo Brothers Creamery

as a small cheesemaking operation in their home

and grew into one of the premier

artisan cheesemaking businesses in the country.

Their Ricotta Salata took home a blue ribbon

for the best traditional cheese produced in America

and went toe to toe with their Italian counterparts

in the World Cheese Awards.

I'm so excited to try this because the truth of the matter

is cheese is not all created equal.

Would you be willing to impart just a fraction

of your cheese knowledge to one very, very earnest student?

Will you be my cheese sensei?

- I think so.

I think so. - I love it.

I will be your provolone Padawan.

- Excellent.

- So, if I wanna learn the process, where do I begin?

- Well, we know that all good cheese starts with good milk.

- Of course.

- So you gotta start there first.

So, head on out that way,

you'll get the milk in the building,

and then we'll get you all suited up to make cheese.

- Okay, let's check out this milk

and get the process moo-vin'.

Please don't change the channel 'cause of that joke.

[Rynn chuckles]

- [Adam] The world produces more than 110 billion gallons

of milk every year, and some of the best milk on the planet

comes from the pastures of Central Pennsylvania.

Caputo Brothers gets all its milk

from dairies within 30 miles of their location.

I'm meeting with Mike, the so-called herd to curd manager

who oversees this process.

This massive dairy locomotive that we're looking at here,

how much milk does it hold?

- [Mike] This trailer holds roughly 63,000 pounds,

7,000 gallons.

- This milk will go into all products, or like do you do

this farm we only use for the mozzarella

and the stracciatella, this one we only use for the ricotta.

- We do a a blended ratio of our dairy farms together.

- Oh, so each farm has a different flavor characteristic?

- Absolutely.

- Is that right?

- Absolutely.

- So, Farm A may be known for sweeter milks,

Farm B may be known for like more grassy milks

or something like that?

- [Mike] Yep.

- [Adam] And this particular milk is what kinda cow

are we getting today?

- It's a blended from-

- Oh, this has already been blended?

- [Mike] Yep, yep.

So, he stops at each of the farms.

- Is that right?

- And brings all of it at one time.

- I love that.

The place that's manufacturing the cheese

is getting a custom blend from within a half hour

of its front door.

That kind of quality control is something

that you very, very seldom find.

[gentle music]

Although there are thousands of different variations

in the cheesemaking process,

resulting in thousands of different types of cheese,

there are essentially four basic steps

to convert milk into cheese.

- The first step to making cheese is adding bacteria,

and this bacteria lowers the pH of the milk,

making it more acidic, which prevents bad bacteria

that can make you sick from growing on the cheese later on.

The second step is adding enzymes to coagulate the milk.

Traditionally, these enzymes come in the form of rennet.

What rennet does is it coagulates the milk

causing the solid curds to come together

and separate from the liquid whey.

And you almost have cheese,

you just have to age it or ripen it.

The conditions under which you age it

are the thing that determines what type of cheese

you end up with.

- [Adam] Cheeses range from soft to hard, stinky to salty,

but many experts would group them

into one of seven main categories.

Number one, soft cheese like brie.

Number two, semi-soft cheese like Monterey Jack or Muenster.

Number three is hard cheeses like cheddar,

Manchego, or Parmesan.

Coming in at number four, the good old stinky blue cheeses.

Number five is cheese with mix-ins like

cheddar with jalapeno or Gouda with truffles mixed it.

Category six is fresh cheese like the mozzarella

and ricotta we're making a Caputo,

and finally there are aged fresh cheeses.

[upbeat music]

Now that we have the milk in the building,

Elizabeth, the head cheesemaker for Caputo Brothers,

is going to show us how to make

their traditional Italian fresh mozzarella.

But before we do anything to the milk,

I wanted to taste the raw stuff straight from the cow.

Is it safe to taste raw milk?

- It is safe, and it's legal here in Pennsylvania.

- I've eaten all over the world and eaten all kinds

of wonderful, I have never had raw milk.

This is the first raw milk I am consuming.

This is a food first. I am very, very excited.

[soft playful suspenseful music]

This is pure, frothy, raw milk straight from the cow to me.

I'm like nervous and excited.

[upbeat music]

I mean, clean is like the top note that I wanna get.

I mean, it's nice and cold and maybe on the very back end

there's like a grassier note to it.

It has a greater degree of thickness to it.

- Yeah, we often describe raw milk

as more like a milkshake in consistency.

- That's pretty accurate.

Because of the blend you use,

it's really unlike any milk I've had

'cause most commercial dairies just have one kind of cow

'cause they're not trying to blend it into cheese.

It's really, really good, though.

Now, we're ready to get down to making this mozzarella.

At Caputo's, they start with pasteurizing the milk,

a process of basically heating it to a temperature

for a sustained amount of time

to kill off any pathogens and bad bacteria.

- [Elizabeth] So, we're up to temperatures

and it's ready to send out.

- [Adam] Now that we have pasteurized the milk,

the real process of cheesemaking begins.

We're looking at a giant vat of pasteurized milk,

meaning most of the bacteria, good and bad,

has been removed, and since most cheesemaking

requires microbial magic,

we need to add some bacteria cultures back in.

- [Elizabeth] So, the next step is adding culture.

- [Adam] Okay.

- [Elizabeth] We use a lactobacillus culture.

- Wait, just that little bit for all this milk?

- It does not take very much

to do what we need to do with it.

- So, it's bacteria in powdered form?

- It is in a freeze dried form.

We're just going to sprinkle the top of the milk with it.

- Okay, let's do it.

And like over there, is this good?

- Yeah, and you'll wanna cover the whole vat.

- I feel like Johnny Culture Seed over here.

[soft music]

Oh, you smell it. It's almost like bread.

It has like a yeast kind of note.

- Yeah, it does have a good smell to it.

- Wow, that's crazy, yeah.

That sort of thing of a country hearth bread.

That smell is the bacteria cultures

breaking down the lactose sugar in the milk

and starting to ferment.

Most American mozzarella cheesemakers cheat

by adding an acid like vinegar or citric acid here,

but at Caputo Brothers, they insist on making mozzarella

the traditional Italian way using bacteria cultures.

What do we do next with all this wonderful pasteurized milk?

- The next step is adding rennet.

Rennet is an enzyme found usually in an animal stomach.

- [Adam] Okay.

- So, the rennet is what's going to set the milk.

So, it takes it from this liquid

and kinda makes it like tofu.

- Wow, let's go grab it.

Without rennet, there would be no cheese.

They found 3,000-year-old cheese in an Egyptian tomb,

although nobody's dared to spread it

on a cracker and take a bite.

But cheese is even older than that.

- Before writing, before money, before architecture,

there was cheese.

- Cheese probably dates to about 7,000 years ago

and it all started with our friend rennet.

- The legend of how cheese was discovered,

the story goes that a nomad had milk inside

of an animal's stomach

and was traveling with it

from one place to another,

and when he arrived to said destination went to drink

his milk and out came cheese.

- Rennet is an enzyme taken from the stomachs

of slaughtered milk-drinking animals,

mostly calves.

When a cheesemaker adds rennet to milk,

the fats and proteins in the milk clump together

as solids called curds.

These curds separate from the liquid in the milk.

All that leftover liquid is called whey.

The more whey that is pressed out of it,

the harder the cheese gets.

Cheers to you.

- Cheers. - There ya go.

No, I'm just kidding. This is rennet.

This would be disgusting to drink.

- Yeah, so you're gonna take one of these spoons.

So, we're gonna add the rennet on top of my spoon

to distribute that better over the surface of the milk.

- [Adam] Ooh, that's cool.

- Great, so now you'll put your spoon in.

It's like you're trying to bring the bottom

of the milk to the top and the top to the bottom.

- [Adam] So, you're like folding it almost?

- [Elizabeth] Yeah.

- [Adam] We're going to give the bacteria cultures and rennet

some time to separate the curds from the whey,

and a little bit later we'll see what other delicious cheese

they make with the leftover whey from this process.

[dramatic music]

[gentle electronic music]

- [Adam] At home in Brooklyn, New York, there's a saying.

What kind of bagel would you like with your shmear?

And for those not familiar, a shmear is usually

a spread of cream cheese.

And the most famous of all cream cheese is

Philadelphia, of course.

Americans eat the equivalent of the Empire State Building

in cream cheese each year.

It's soft, it's creamy, you can flavor it up

and spread it on just about anything.

It was named Philadelphia Cream Cheese in 1880,

but if you go to the City of Brotherly Love and look

for the Philly Cream Cheese factory, you won't find it.

But guess where you will?

In New York.

- It was called Philadelphia Cream Cheese

because Philadelphia was considered the dairy area

of the East Coast or maybe the whole country.

And so it had this romance about it.

But it was not made there, it was made in New York.

Go figure.

- [Adam] And it's not just bagels that get smeared

with that cream cheese lovin'.

This super spreadable is on or in the favorite

of our most favorite foods,

from stuffed French toast to sushi,

from cheese balls to cheesecake,

and can you even imagine carrot cake

without cream cheese frosting?

No way.

But speaking of whey, we're heading back to Caputo Brothers

to continue our firsthand look at how mozzarella is made

in the traditional Italian style.

We've added the bacteria cultures and rennet

to separate it into curds and whey.

- [Elizabeth] So, it's been about an hour

since we added the rennet.

- Right, and you can see there's

like this matte finish on top.

- Yep, so that's kinda the cream line coming to the top,

but we're gonna see if it's ready or not.

And the way you do that is you stick your finger in here

and you're just gonna-

- Oh wow!

- Looks more like pudding now.

- [Adam] It's got a skin on it.

- And if you can see that it nicely smoothly cuts.

See how that broke?

- Broke, yeah. - Very nicely?

- Like flan.

- That means that it's ready.

- So, now that we've established that we're

at the right consistency, we've done our little poke test,

what do we do next?

- [Elizabeth] We're about to cut it.

- Let's cut it.

- This is called a spino. - Whoa!

This is what they use in Italy.

We dive this in and bring it back to the surface.

- That's actually quite beautiful. Oh!

So, these are the curds.

- These are the cards.

Mozzarella is a higher moisture cheese,

so we're gonna cut these to be a bit larger.

Do you wanna try cutting?

- Absolutely, just to be able

to use the Gandalf staff over here.

- So, you'll go down and when you bring it up,

turn it about 90 degrees.

- This to me is like the cheese equivalent of the way

they would rake like a zen garden,

except this is way more tasty.

So, how is my spino technique?

- [Elizabeth] You are doing a great job.

- I really do mean this in earnest.

This is so relaxing.

[metal scrapes] Oh no!

Me speeny, me speeny!

[somber violin music]

Dude, forget "Pagliacci,"

this is the worst tragedy in Italy right here.

Now, let's take a step back

and take a look at another side of cheese.

We all love cheese, right?

But it might surprise you what some people

are willing to pay or do to get it.

Cheese is the number one stolen food in the world.

In fact, 4% of all cheese made is stolen.

But some cheeses are more desired than others.

Much like a fine painting, some cheeses take

a great deal more effort to make than others,

hence making them more valuable.

- I think that cheese is like fine art

because it really holds a snapshot of time

of the environment and the relation

of animals to humans to the land we live in.

And when you eat that one piece of cheese, that's it.

And you'll never be able to experience that again.

- [Adam] Cheese is made from the milk of everything

from Holsteins to Himalayan yaks.

One of the most expensive cheeses in the world

is made from an unlikely source

high in the mountains of Serbia.

- So, there's a donkey milk cheese

that is the most expensive cheese

that I've ever read about at $1700 a pound,

and it's called Pule.

I myself have not bought it.

- [Adam] The reason Pule is so expensive is because

it takes two weeks of milking these donkeys

to make one pound of Pule.

However, all this effort is rewarded by a cheese

that has one-third as much fat

and has 60 times more Vitamin C than most cheese.

Those rich enough to try it say Pule tastes like Manchego

with a deeper, richer flavor.

And so this on top here, this liquid, this is the whey?

- This is all whey.

We'll let this sit about 10 minutes.

The curds will knit together and the whey will continue

to come to the surface,

- [Adam] Mmm-hmm.

and then we'll take the whey off and make ricotta.

- [Adam] And at Caputo Brothers,

they actually use their whey to make an amazing ricotta

which we'll get to later.

But Elizabeth is going to let me taste

some of the fresh curds.

So, it has, it's literally

it moves like silken tofu or the albumen of an egg.

So, I love this.

I'm gonna take a step back for health and safety reasons.

So, it has the consistency like a silken tofu,

but because it's milk, it's more substantial.

I don't know, is it possible to taste more milky than milk?

- Well, that makes sense.

Cheese is just concentrated milk.

We've taken off all of this whey, which is the extra liquid,

so you have concentrated milk flavor in your mouth.

- Oh, 'cause all the moisture's gone.

- Exactly.

- It's quite crazy.

It liquefies the moment it touches your tongue.

It has a decadence and a dessert-like quality

devoid of sugar, devoid of vanilla, devoid of cream.

And all it is is just the rennet, skill, time,

and really good quality milk.

And now it's going to become something fascinating

and delicious, part tradition and part modern marvel.

But this is more a melting modern marvel,

mouthwatering melting modern marvel at that.

I'm very excited, and I'll be using more

alliterative sentences as this episode continues.

[Elizabeth chuckles]

So, let's chug along

with this cheery cheesemaking, children.

The Great Pyramid of Giza weighs 13 billion pounds.

That's how much cheese Americans eat each year,

and artisan cheese makers like Caputo Brothers

can't come close to meeting that demand.

So, we're going to a Kroger supermarket's

cheese conversion facility in Crawfordsville, Indiana

to check out some of the technology

that helps get all that cheese from the farm to your fridge.

- It reminds me of the last of "Raiders of the Lost Ark,"

the shot of the warehouse,

and he's walking back through there.

Just rows and rows of cheese.

[upbeat music]

- [Adam] This facility supplies Kroger supermarkets

with literally tons of cheese

in 2,700 stores across 35 states.

Kroger doesn't make the cheese.

Instead, they get truckloads full of 640-pound blocks

and their job here is to feed it into all sorts

of machines to convert these massive blocks

into cheese slices, shreds, and smaller blocks.

- We usually bring in about 500,000 pounds of cheese a day,

typically between 2 1/2 to 3 million pounds

of cheese a week.

In each one of these boxes is 640 pounds of cheese.

Within two to three weeks all this cheese

will be used up completely.

[machines whirring]

- [Adam] The facility processes 120 million pounds

of cheese each year.

To meet this demand, requires milk from 60,000 cows.

That's a train of cows that could reach the summit

of Mount Everest, not once, but 15 times.

Converting these 640 pound blocks into slices and shreds

is no easy task and production lead Matthew Howard

is going to show us how they do it.

- So, let's begin at the start

of the actual production process.

This machine takes our giant 640-pound blocks of cheese,

lifts it into position,

and it goes down the conveyor belt over there

to our wire guillotine.

- [Adam] These big 640s, as they're known,

get sliced into slabs then moved down the belt

to the ultrasonic knife.

[high-pitched tone screeches]

This device that sounds like it's right out

of a spy movie uses a series of blades

that emit high-frequency sound waves

to slice through these huge blocks of cheese.

The sound waves help keep the blades

from sticking to the cheese,

and then they go into a density scanner

which takes an x-ray of the log

to help the slicer know exactly how to cut it.

This machine cuts more than 3 million cheese slices a day,

seven days a week, 365 days a year.

And traveling at thousands of revolutions a minute,

this blade not only slices cheese,

but also inserts paper in order

to separate each individual slice.

This all happens so fast you have to use

an ultra slow motion camera to see this magic in action.

- We actually produce 380,000 cases a day.

All the cheese for Kroger in America.

- [Adam] All this cheese is getting loaded onto as many

as 40 trucks a day and sent out to grocery stores

across America to make sure we get the cheese we need.

Now let's get back to making the cheese.

At this point in the process,

most cheesemakers drain the whey and get rid of it

as a byproduct, but here at Caputo Brothers,

they use their whey to make ricotta.

All right, it's been about 10 minutes.

So, as the song says, I want you to show me the way.

- We'll know if it's ready to whey off

if you stick your hands in and you don't feel

those curds right at the top,

then we know we can take that top layer

of whey. - Yeah, I don't feel

them at all, so they've sunken?

- They've sunken quite a bit.

So, we'll take some whey off now,

and we'll use these strainers and pitchers.

- [Adam] Okay.

- [Elizabeth] And strain it through

in case there's any curds.

- That good?

- Perfect, and then you'll just put it

through your strainer.

[whey pattering]

- And again, this is tradition, this is what was-

- This is how they do it in Italy.

They take the whey and then they'll recook it.

- [Adam] Oh, recooking it, which is...

- [Elizabeth] Ricotta.

- Ricotta. I love that.

I have to say, I was today years old

when I found out that ricotta and mozzarella

can both be made from the same batch of milk.

So, I'm kind of amazed at what kind of alchemy

we're using to turn this yellow liquid

into that creamy, grainy wonderful cheese.

The alchemy used is both simple,

like cheesemaking in general is,

and ingeniously modern as steam is used

to heat up the whey.

But here at Caputo, a steam wand helps the process

work its magic.

[upbeat music]

It's this way, right?

- It goes down.

- See, you sure you want me to do this?

'Cause I have a feeling this is gonna

go blow my damn eyebrows off.

- It's gonna be really loud.

- All right.

And with that little lever,

I begin the crescendoing sound [machine rumbling]

of a mini rocket blasting off.

It's a steam wand heating the whey

and beginning the cooking in the ricotta process.

I'm amazed at this method of making ricotta,

and I have to see how this turns out.

- [Adam] The story goes that 800 years ago

a Sicilian cheesemaker spilled some whey

into a pot of boiling water and mamma mia, ricotta was made!

[upbeat music]

Here at Caputo Brothers Creamery,

our whey has been sitting for about 40 minutes

in the steam bath.

What was the whey byproduct of a different cheese,

has turned into a frothy, beautiful ricotta.

- If you wanna taste it, now is the best time.

- Is it?

- When it's warm, oh, it's delicious.

You're just gonna take a light scoop.

You don't really wanna dive down,

you just wanna take a little shave off the top.

- Okay.

- Just like that.

- This is very new. This is crazy.

- [Elizabeth] Now, it's gonna be really hot.

- Ooh, I love that smell so much.

[gentle bright music]

That's gorgeous.

Oh, man. It's, like, velvety.

I've never had ricotta, like, custard before.

You've ruined me now for ricotta.

Nice job, Caputo.

Now I can't eat any other cheese ever.

The only thing that comes close to eating warm cheese

fresh from the source is eating warm cheese on pasta,

and our favorite pasta cheese combo, that's right,

macaroni and cheese.

The first recorded mac and cheese recipe

goes back 800 years, but it became one of America's

best-selling brands in 1937

when Kraft Macaroni & Cheese was developed

as an affordable meal during the Depression.

Today, Kraft sells more than a million boxes

of mac and cheese every day.

And believe it or not, it's the unofficial food

of our Canadian neighbors to the North.

The Canucks eat 55% more Kraft Dinner,

as they call it, than we do, and they eat it

with ketchup on top.

I got to taste warm, ricotta fresh out of the vat,

but that was only the infant stage of Caputo's ricotta.

I got very excited when Rynn Caputo pulled me aside

to taste the finished product.

- I heard that you absolutely loved eating the ricotta,

but most people don't have access to that.

So, I wanted you to have it

once it's had a chance to set up,

and notice it's much firmer. - [Adam] Oh!

Look at it. Like cheesecake.

- So delicate, and it's really creamy.

- That's ridiculously good.

[Rynn laughs]

Borders on cream cheese or like marscapone

in terms of its smoothness.

That in a lasagna is such a game changer.

Unlike any ricotta I've had. It's superb.

That ricotta was amazing,

but there is this other cheese next to it

that looks like it took a roll in the dirt.

You know, I gotta try that one, too.

- So, this is our Ricotta Salata.

Instead of putting it in the baskets,

we press it and we age it.

How long do you think we age it for?

- Oh, you never guess

a lady's age. [Rynn laughs]

So, I'm gonna guess.

I know nothing about cheesemaking.

I'm gonna say six months.

- Good guess.

So, in six weeks we get this cheese to look like this.

- So how in the hell was six months a good guess?

Why you playin' with me [Rynn laughing]

like this, Rynn?

'Cause the number six was in it?

Look at it, it cuts like a birthday cake.

Okay, so I'm gonna cut a wedge out here.

Now, wait for it. Ah!

- [Adam] That is so awesome.

And it's the same cheese.

- It is.

- Look at that, you can see it is absolutely solid.

That's breathtaking.

So, you have to slice it very thin

which is why I'm slicing it on a wire.

- It's like a cheese crime.

Two ricotta come into a bar, one was assaulted.

- [laughs] I love it.

So, go ahead and try that and see what you think.

- Oh, that's so good.

And there's a-

- A mushroom kinda earthiness?

- I was about to say,

like a funky. - Yeah, you get the funk.

- It's like an earthy, salty, creaminess.

I love it. I really love it.

[upbeat music]

This finished Caputo cheese may have ruined me

for any other ricotta, and I got a feeling

that this fresh mozzarella I got coming up

is gonna be even better.

Practice safe lunch. Use a condiment.

All right, we've drained the whey and made ricotta from it,

and what was left behind were the curds.

Now, it's time to turn those curds into cheese.

It's time for the mozzarella magic to start to take shape.

- All right, so hand me a block and you can take one.

- Okay. Ooh, it feels cool.

Okay, so what do I do?

into smaller chunks.

- [Adam] Okay.

- Maybe somewhere around the size of a quarter.

- That too small?

- Nope, that's perfect.

Doin' what we're doin' now, stretchin' by hand,

this is what makes it artisan.

[soft tense music]

So, the next step is we're gonna add a little bit of salt.

So, this we kinda just do by hand.

- Okay.

is about enough.

- We start by tempering the curds

with a shot of 190-degree water.

Then, we stir the curds using plastic wands

that Elizabeth and her team

lovingly call their magic sticks.

You can already see the mozzarella forming!

Oh god, I'm just gonna need some nachos

and some privacy, guys.

You guys all gotta go home.

[upbeat music]

For me, and probably most Americans,

mozzarella lives at the heart of comfort food central.

Can you believe each of us eats on average

about 13 pounds of it a year?

But most of us are introduced to America's favorite cheese

as kids by peeling those long strips

of string cheese and stuffing 'em in your mouth.

The string cheese craze in America is credited by many

to Francis Baker, a mozzarella cheesemaker

in St. Cloud, Wisconsin who, in 1977, had the brilliant idea

to package individual pieces of mozzarella,

but he needed a hook.

The first versions of string cheese were twisted ropes

of mozzarella that he tried to sell to bars of all places.

Soon, they rebranded as the perfect healthy kid snack

and repackaged so they were easier for little hands

to hold it and became the favorite snack food

for school lunches across America.

Soon, other brands like Frigo CheeseHeads, Sargento,

POLLY-O, and Kraft made string cheese into a big business.

You can eat it any way you want.

It's a free country, but it's called string cheese

for a reason.

- [Elizabeth] And now we're going to stretch it.

Pick it up by the middle on your magic stick,

and you'll be able to stretch it.

- Tell me Caputo Brothers is not making magic.

This is why it's called the magic stick.

Stretching cheese, or as the Italians call it,

pasta filata, aligns the proteins in the cheese

and gives the mozzarella that gooey stretchiness

that you want when you're pulling a slice of pizza

from the pie.

It's what makes string cheese stringy

and gives mozzarella that gorgeous mouth feel that it has.

If this were like fried right here,

just fill one of these with marinara.

I just wanna do Double Dutch with this

for the rest of my life.

[dramatic music]

- [Adam] Cheese isn't always decadent and delicious.

In the 1970s, government cheese was born.

And even though it was super sketchy,

it became part of most Americans' lives,

and we learned to love it.

- In the 1970s, prices for milk went way up

and then they came crashing way down.

It was really hard times for dairy farmers.

So, under U.S. President Jimmy Carter,

the U.S. government pumped $2 billion into the industry.

And they used that cash to produce more and more milk.

- [Adam] Except now the dairy farmers

had a different problem.

They had way more milk than they could sell.

So, the U.S. government stepped in again.

They decided to buy up all the surplus milk

and they used it to make, you guessed it, processed cheese.

And that actually caused another problem.

- Cheese has to be stored

under temperature-controlled facilities,

and that was really expensive,

so the U.S. government started distributing

the cheese to people who needed it.

This was called government cheese.

- [Adam] This vast surplus of government cheese

was processed cheese made from a blend

of different cheese products and emulsifiers.

It came in gigantic five-pound blocks.

Often, it was covered in mold

from sitting in huge underground storage facilities

for up to 10 years.

And the taste?

The nicest thing the government could say

about it was that it slices and melts well.

- Now, government cheese has a bit of a mixed reputation.

On the one hand it's associated with hard times,

but on the other hand, a lot of people grew up eating it.

And so, it's this nostalgic taste

of childhood for them.

Mark Wahlberg and his siblings grew up

eating government cheese, and they actually opened

a burger chain called Wahlburgers that offered

government cheese for free as a free topping

on all of their burgers.

- [Adam] To see the milk arrive there,

like that's the back of the tank that we saw

when Sean delivered the milk in the beginning of the day,

and we saw it pasteurized, and to see it

kind of go milk to curd to ribbons of cheesy goodness.

Seriously, this is gorgeous.

Oh, wow.

- Well, once it's stretched, grab a clump,

- [Adam] Okay.

and you're tryin' to work that outer layer

of cheese very thin.

So you're kind of smoothing it, smoothing it,

and all the while, - [Adam] Oh, okay.

you'll collect it with your other hand.

There ya go.

with that finger as you grab it.

And you're just gonna pinch, pinch, pinch, pinch, pinch

until you can feel it break.

- [Adam] Ah-ha.

- And put this in here?

- [Elizabeth] Yep.

This is my favorite time to eat this cheese.

- [Adam] Really?

- Warm, freshly stretched.

- Yeah, it's just so gorgeous.

Is it okay if I try a little?

- Absolutely.

- How could I not want to try this?

It's warm and it's silky when you touch it.

Ooh!

[soft suspenseful music]

So good.

This has to be like in the Caputo benefits package,

like vision, dental, and the ability to eat

top quality mozzarella warm and stringy

outta the stretching process.

The milk is the first note you get.

All I can say is I love my job.

[Elizabeth chuckles]

Just like a well-oiled baseball glove, a bottle of wine,

or Tom Hanks,

cheese is something that gets better with age

thanks to microscopic organisms in dank, dark places.

We've been granted access to a cave

in a place you'd never suspect.

It's underneath the city streets.

I can't wait to see what's lurking inside.

- [Adam] The last step of the cheesemaking process

is aging it,

and for that we are descending into a cave,

a cheese cave in the remote borough of

Brooklyn, New York, my hometown.

Someone who ages cheese is called an affineur,

and Crown Finish Caves is the only affineur

in the U.S. that doesn't make cheese, only ages it.

- In 2000 we found this property.

It was built as a brewery in the late 1800s.

These underground caverns or tunnels,

they were designed to ferment lagers.

You're 30 feet below the street

so it has an existing condition

and a history to fermentation.

- [Adam] When you see mold, yeast, and bacteria,

it usually means it's time to clean out the fridge,

but this humid, dark cheese cave is like a health spa

for all those little microorganisms to thrive

and do what they do best, multiply, die, ferment, repeat.

This process of fermentation

is what gives most cheese its flavor.

Ethan Partyka, the cave manager,

might just have the coolest job title in the world.

It's the cave manager's job to prepare,

wash, and flip the cheese, all to create

the perfect surface

or rind for microorganisms to grow.

As it ages, enzymes from the stuff growing on the rind

penetrate into the cheese and give it

all that delicious flavor.

- [Benton] Some cheese stays there a year,

some cheese stays there a couple of months.

Most of it stays there around four months.

You can Cryovac cheese, put it on a shelf

in a walk-in cooler and leave it there and it will,

it's not open to the air so it's not evolving.

We're trying to help that cheese move along

in the right direction.

So, controlling the environment that it's in,

flipping it, letting each side have air around it,

letting um, you know, washing it as needed.

You're wanting to manage that cheese to bring it

to its fullest potential.

It needs to be cared for like a baby.

- Back in Spring Grove, Pennsylvania,

I've pasteurized it, I've added bacterial cultures,

and I've cut out the curds and separated the whey.

Now that I've learned how to stretch

their traditional mozzarella,

I asked if I could do a taste test, my way.

[soft tense music]

The stretchiness and the flavor of it made me wonder

if we could maybe use this like almost,

I guess one might say cheese clay.

Okay, let's see if this works.

I could be going down in flames or in history.

Okay.

[tense music continues]

Oh, man, Dr. Atkins, eat your heart out.

This is so groovy, come on.

[bright music]

Maybe mozzarella isn't your first choice for a burger,

but this isn't your average mozzarella.

It's creamy, a little salty, it's chewy,

and without doubt, the perfect covering

for this inverted cheeseburger.

Even with bacon, with pickles and onions

and ketchup and mustard and stuff,

you still taste that cheese.

And having had that raw milk,

that you still get all those characteristics,

that creaminess, that milkshake-iness,

that grassiness.

It's so good. Mm.

Over 7,000 years ago, the very first cheeses were made.

Since then, over 1800 different varieties

of cheese have been created.

They're enjoyed all over the world

and all throughout the day, and the next time

you sink your teeth into this incredible edible,

hopefully you'll be able to understand,

appreciate, and taste the thousands of years

of experiments, craftsmanship, scientific ingenuity,

and sheer artistry that go into making

this magnificent, mouthwatering melty modern marvel.

So, whether you slice, dice, or grate,

there is no debate that from the cities to the seas,

America loves its cheese.