Heavy cream it’s gluten free?

[Onofrio]

Hello everyone 

I'm trying to have a little menu done for my customers and I want to know if heavy cream and parmigiano cheese are gluten free I’m new to this but looks like a lot more ppl like eating gluten free so I want to stay on the safe side thanks for tour help 

[trents]

Welcome to the forum Onofrio!

Wikipedia has this to say about parmigiano cheese: 

"Parmigiano-Reggiano is made from unpasteurized cow's milk. The whole milk of the morning milking is mixed with the naturally skimmed milk (which is made by keeping milk in large shallow tanks to allow the cream to separate) of the previous evening's milking, resulting in a part skim mixture. This mixture is pumped into copper-lined vats, which heat evenly and contribute copper ions to the mix . . . Starter whey (containing a mixture of certain thermophilic lactic acid bacteria) is added . . ."

If the lactic acid bacteria used in the aging of the cheese has been grown on wheat, barley or rye then technically it would not be gluten free. You would need to do some research involving your source of the cheese in order ascertain that. This would be true of any aged cheese. In any case, the amount of gluten present in the cheese might be lower than the 20 ppm which is he official limit established by the FDA. I believe that in the USA, if the bacteria was cultured on a gluten containing grain then that would have to be stated in the food label list of ingredients. Others on the forum are more informed about these things than I am so hopefully, someone else will chime in.

I would be careful not to advertise any of your menu items as gluten free unless you can confirm that it is so. There are labs that will test for gluten but this is probably pretty expensive. Even 20 ppm of gluten is enough to cause illness in some people with gluten related health issues.

[Onofrio]

Thank u so much that is why before  I’ll do

anything need confirmations   

[Scott Adams]

Almost all modern cheese making techniques have abandoned the randomness of growing cultures on bread or wheat in caves in favor of getting exactly the culture they want from labs. Entire businesses grow these cultures in labs to sell to the cheese industry, but many larger makers have their own in house labs now. The same is true for almost all wines, which used to rely on yeasts that naturally landed in the wine during the crush/pressing stage, although there is a very small niche group of wines that are being made in California that are now being made using naturally occurring yeasts (the ones I've tried taste a bit off, and I don't like them). Large cheese makers don't gable anymore with some of these traditional methods of growing cultures, however there may be a few artisan cheeses that still do this.