Burro di bufala begins as cream, churned until it becomes butter. When the cream itself is taken straight from centrifugation, the leftover mass is still left to mature and then stripped of water. What remains is a dairy fat with a quiet density, ready for the last, cooler gestures of the dairy.
Rising fat is added between ten and fifteen degrees. After the mass has firmed, cold water finishes the tempering, and only then is it pressed into the familiar butter shape. The sequence is unhurried: warmth enough to work the fat, chill enough to set it, a brief bath that leaves the block ready for wrapping.
According to Regione Campania, the work belongs to the same landscape as mozzarella di bufala campana, across the provinces of Napoli, Caserta and Salerno. In the shops it appears in many cuts, from one hundred and twenty-five grams up to five thousand. A small pat for the table or a larger block for the kitchen both come from that same cream, churned, matured and cooled into butter.