Biribil: mozzarella moves to Euskadi
When they ask John Ballaz what makes it different from mozzarella de Biribil of any other has no qualms about taking one, breaking it in half and crushing it between his fingers. The milk pours out of it and leaves a trail on the table. “Do you see that?, he points out, “there is the key: in the hydration”.
That whitish thread has no loss. If you follow its trail you will reach Biribil, a basque cheese that neither Idiazábal produces nor is it in the middle of the mountains. So far, everything unusual enough to arm myself with courage and climb the Etxebarria Park in Bilbao , one of the high lungs of the city that also, in an unusual way, conquered the land of a vast steel factory.
The Biribil workshop has something of clandestine . Some makeshift stairs, a dead end, a back door. The bucolic image of a cheese factory quickly evaporates. However, where the mythical Thate family boned, minced, dried and stuffed meat and cured meats long ago, here, in the midst of a labyrinth of asphalt, aluminum and white tile, smells like fresh cream . So let's save the bucolic for the commercials.
John Ballaz
John Ballaz he is a robust man. We could really imagine him on a baserri, surrounded by sheep, hoeing to heaven. He has the folksy manner of a planting man , the big hands, the dedicated look. As he walks in, he throws two ingots of rennet onto a table that land like the good news: with satisfaction.
He surprises the past of him. He changed the aeronautics and automotive to weave balls of mozzarella and burrata. “I have spent the last twenty years on a plane, going around the world. I didn't want to spend the next twenty the same way." When he became involved in Biribil, he left his position as quality manager, but when he caresses the spinning machine, one guesses that he is still a physicist in love with the processes.
And also, no doubt, a earth man : “My family is from Otxandio (a town of barely a thousand inhabitants). Idiazábal I have seen all my life. As a txiki I have gone to see sheep give birth, to make cheese, to make sauce in the fields”, he says. In the background, Kevin and Abel, one pale and red-haired, the other dark-skinned, pack dozens, hundreds of mozzarella and burrata which will be distributed to his shop on Calle Heros, to several restaurants in the area and, recently, to the entire national territory through his online commerce.
The rennet of the mozzarella
IT IS NOT A DRILL
Theirs are the pasta filata cheese . Juicy mozzarellas, burrata stuffed with a stracciatella creamy, homemade, cold rested for hours. To see one open, an entrance fee could be charged. What a pinch of that shiny skin oozes is asturian cream with a minimum of 35% fat. What surrounds her blunt milk rennet of Cantabrian Friesian cows, from Liérganes, from the La Pasiega de Peña Pelada cheese factory , made according to the Ballaz recipe.
He, Javier Alguer and Álvaro González – getxotarras of those of all life– have made some cheeses of the Southern Italy spinning in them the best proximity raw materials that they have been able to find. They have concentrated the north in spheres of an inch. So no: what they do in Biribil is not a simulacrum of what is from Apulia.
There, in the cottages of the now so distant Italian boot, Ballaz planted himself to try to learn what he was not taught: "It is the great secret of the dairies of Apulia and Campania . I've been working with them for months but they keep many details that are key. And the devil is in the details.
Seasonal Roasted Strawberries with Burrata and Balsamic
And maybe he's on your side, too. In just one year –and what a year!– Biribil has lived up to his name. It has been established as a round business , which is what 'biribil' means in Basque. From his workshop and his little place in the center of Bilbao, almost a showroom in which his fresh cheeses share space with other deli such as wines, preserves or bread, they have managed to differentiate themselves in Spain without too much effort. It's what they were looking for: “We weren't going to do Idiazábal!” jokes Ballaz.
Abel has driven at dawn to break Lierganes for naturally fermented rennet. The bacteria continue to work – this time, clandestinely – all the way to Bilbao. He feeds it into the spinning machine that grinds it and kneads it at 90°C. With the change in pH it becomes elastic, it acquires the texture of a whitish toffee that one does not know whether to bite or wrap in it.
“In the process, the paste also acquires the ability to absorb liquid” Ballaz explains to me and I look towards that milk creek that continues to flow on the table. “With that we get flavor because what remains inside is milk.” To catch her, he seals between his fingers a burrata he has just filled with stracciatella. He doesn't tie a knot: “In a 250 g burrata you get 35 g of a knot, which is mozzarella at the price of a burrata. We don't do it that way,” he explains.
Interior of the workshop
"AH, THE MOZZARELLA HAS TASTE!"
You are right. And that is the great revelation that Biribil has meant for many, accustomed to linear fresh cheese from the supermarket, to the bags of grated cheese destined to cover the deficiencies of pastas and refrigerated pizzas.
They work from small, which is not so small if you think about the 3,000 mozzarellas they are capable of producing in a day. The bad news is that the shelf life of their cheeses does not exceed two weeks. They are flower of a day: they are born under a death sentence about to be executed . “If you want them to last you have to dehydrate them and the flavor disappears,” he says. The industry can't wait for a natural fermentation , but with an expiration date of more than a month. “They are dedicated to standardizing”, criticizes Ballaz, “and that is why real mozzarella is a great unknown , even though it is one of the most consumed cheeses in the world”.
In Biribil you can find it in 125 and 250 g. The burrata, in addition, pesto or with Maison Balme truffle from Biarritz. They promise more inventions and also an approach to maturation: they will try with the caciocavallo and the scamorza . “Another project based on the same technology”, clarify Ballaz and the physicist in him.
Biribil was born out of the need for a landing and has the same surprise as that Italian farmer who washed the remaining rennet from the buffalo milk to find a way out. The povera cuisine it has never been poor in possibilities. Like finding a cheese paste that could be knitted like a good winter coat. Like finding a Basque mozzeria and a mozzarella full of flavor right on Bilbao's pavement.