Registration is open for the Workshop: Hollow Pasta Filata, running in early November, and we're mentioning it now because the seats for hands-on stretched-curd sessions tend to fill faster than any other workshop we run. If you've been meaning to get serious about mozzarella, provolone, or a hollow-format aged pasta filata style and kept pushing it to "someday," this is the workshop that turns someday into a date on your calendar.
Pasta filata is deceptively hard to learn from a book. The stretching step rewards feel over formula — how the curd handles at a given pH, how much it wants to give before it tears, how the water temperature changes what your hands can get away with — and that's exactly the kind of thing that's slow to pick up alone in your own make room and much faster to pick up standing next to someone who's stretched a thousand batches. That's the whole premise of the workshop: less lecture, more curd in your hands.
Why this fall, specifically
This year's specialty cheese category has kept growing even as grocery budgets tighten elsewhere, and stretched-curd styles have been part of that growth — they travel well, they photograph well for a retail case, and they give a counter something a little different to put next to the usual cheddar and Alpine-style wedges. A few members who make primarily bloomy-rind or washed-rind styles have told us they're adding a pasta filata line specifically because it diversifies what they can offer a distributor without requiring a second cave.
If that's the reasoning that's had you eyeing this workshop, you're not alone, and it's a good one. Pasta filata also asks less of aging space than most of what we teach in our maturation courses, which makes it a reasonable next step for a small producer whose cave is already full of longer-aged wheels and who's looking for something that turns over faster.
What the two days actually cover
The workshop runs hands-on stretching sessions both days, alongside shorter sessions on curd pH targets, hollow-format shaping (for anyone chasing a true smoked scamorza or hollow provolone shape rather than a solid block), and a walkthrough of the shelf-stability questions that come up once you're selling a fresh stretched-curd product at retail rather than eating it the same week you made it. That last part matters more than it sounds — a fresh pasta filata cheese has a different risk profile than an aged wheel, and the workshop spends real time on it rather than treating it as an afterthought.
Seats are limited because the hands-on stations only fit so many people at once, and past sessions have sold out roughly a month ahead. If you're on the fence, the honest advice is to register now and figure out your travel later — you can always release the seat if your schedule doesn't work out, but you can't always get one back once the roster fills.
Check the events calendar for exact dates, location, and the registration link, or reach out to the Events Committee if you have questions about whether this workshop is the right fit for where your program is right now.
The International Cheese Federation (ICF) and More Cheese are entirely fictional. This post is demonstration content created for MemberJunction. All people, organizations, events, courses, certifications, figures, and quotations in it are invented, and nothing here represents a real association, a real business, a real person, or real professional advice.