Typical products of Bronte
The peppered sheep cheese  This ovine cheese, the most ancient in Sicily, was known and appreciated already by the Greeks. The one produced in Bronte, a hard paste, compact, raw, with spicy taste and persistent perfume, has a seasoning of about 3-12 months.
It is made with whole sheep's milk, still with the typical equipment and natural manufacturing process (adding rennet), in round forms and used at the table or for grating. The forms of brontese ovine cheese have a diameter of about 40-50 cm with a height of 10-15, and a weight of 10-20 Kg.
 On the crust, white yellowish, are impressed the signs of the molding in the wicker baskets where the still soft paste was put. To increase the characteristic spicy taste sometime are added some curdling black pepper grains. In these last years it is better appreciated also with the adding of green pistachio of Bronte.
When is fresh and not salty, it is called "Tuma". After a first salting is called "Primo Sale", and has a sweet, delicate and slightly spicy taste. The seasoning is still carried out in rooms where the cheese ripening is regulated by conditions exclusively or prevalently natural. At the end of the seasoning (for a maximum of about 12 months) is called "Tumazzu", reaches the characteristic smell and the unmistakable spicy taste. |
Ricotta
 The term "ricotta", from the Latin Recoctus, indicates the re-cooking of whey. The whey of the chosen species (cow, sheep or goat) placed in the vat is heated and salt or fig or sour latex is added, depending on the customs and the type of milk, then brought to a temperature of about 80-90 °C, after adding a small percentage of goat's milk or the same species, until the whey proteins coagulate, causing the ricotta to rise to the surface.
Once it has risen to the surface, after eliminating the foam on the surface, the ricotta is collected with a ladle and placed in the fiscella (baskets) that will be placed on a draining table to drain.
Ricotta, creamy and soft, is one of the most widely consumed typical products. It has an ivory white color, more straw yellow for cow's ricotta, a truncated cone shape due to the fiscella in which it is contained and a sweet flavor.  It can be eaten fresh, baked or after repeated salting, dried on wooden boards in natural and ventilated environments, to be eaten grated. The latter, of ancient tradition, is notoriously an indispensable ingredient of some renowned Sicilian dishes (it cannot be missing from pasta alla norma or fried aubergines).
Baked ricotta is obtained 1 - 2 days after production: the ricotta is placed in a ceramic container, previously buttered (sometimes sprinkled with ground black pepper) and cooked in a stone oven at 180-200 ° C for about 30 minutes until a thin reddish-brown film is obtained. Agostino Gallo (1499 – 1570), the agronomist protagonist of sixteenth-century agronomy in his book Le dieci giornate della vera agricoltura e piacere della villa (1564) where he proposes the first rational analysis of dairy technology, states that goat ricotta is the best in absolute terms, while sheep ricotta is tastier than cow ricotta. And in fact, tastes have not changed even today.
The fresh fruit
 Valuable and of elevated quality also the fresh fruit production.
In Bronte territory, and et5cly in the high Simeto valley (lower part of town), in less than thirty years, has developed a fruit growing pole of over 1000 hectares cultivated principally as pear and peach trees.  The origin of this production goes up to 1951 when the baron Francesco Pace, following the example of what was happening in Emilia-Romagna, that had started a modern, Italian fruit growing activity, established the first 36 hectares of pear, peach and apple trees.
Other farmers followed his example and, during the last fifty years, the total area planted with pear trees is about 1.000 hectares, with prevalent presence of the variety Coscia (70%) and Summer Butirra (18%) and also varieties Abate Fetel, Kaiser, Conference, Decana, Passa Grassana, Butirri and Garofalo. The pears, the peaches (yellow paste or Tabacchiera), the white nectarine, are well known in the national markets for taste, scent, color and the particular pulp consistency.
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Among the dairy products of Bronte, it is worth mentioning the pecorino pepper, the salami and capicollo cheeses, the cheeses and ricotta with the addition of pistachio, vegetables or chilli, the fresh or aged provola, the sheep's ricotta (fresh or salted or baked).
