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assorted cheeses in a drawer in the fridge

Credit: Photo: Erik Bernstein; Food Styling: Thomas Hoerup & Maya Borrero

You can tell a lot about someone by doing a quick scroll through their camera roll. Take a spin through mine and you’ll find a defining theme: Okay, this girl likes cheese. Another little scroll? Oh whoa, no, she really likes cheese. Cheese shops are my idea of a museum, and I regularly gawk at the wheels in a case like they’re puppies in a window.

I get downright emotional knowing there are still so many cheeses I’ve yet to eat, not to mention the foreign ones that are hard to find when I’m back home in California. When I was in Italy, for instance, my camera roll was a running visual “cheeses to find” list, and one delectably spreadable cheese had the most cameos: Stracchino.

Belgioioso crescenza stracchino.

Credit: Mackenzie Filson

What’s So Great About BelGioioso Crescenza-Stracchino?

BelGioioso’s stracchino is like if you gathered all the melty-fatty heft from a gooey ball of burrata, and added a bit of a cultured tang reminiscent of cream cheese. If burrata is a stick of regular ol’ butter, this stracchino is like a cultured, grass-fed butter you got wrapped in a piece of parchment paper at a farmers market (oh hi, Ina!).

Belgioioso crescenza stracchino.

Credit: Mackenzie Filson

This cheese is especially good on a sandwich, swaddled with mortadella and pistachio pesto. Even just a regular slice of toast with pepper and really good olive oil is a revelation with this cheese on it.

Belgioioso crescenza stracchino on toast.

Credit: Mackenzie Filson

What’s the Best Way to Use BelGioioso Crescenza-Stracchino?

Stracchino, much like most cheeses, is at home with any kind of bread. To eat it the Roman way (something I did very often between the hours of 5 p.m. and 7 p.m.), layer the following ingredients: crispy flatbread, stracchino cheese, and briny anchovies. Maybe a drizzle of olive oil, if you’re feeling flirty.

The result? A salty, savory, creamy, crackly flavor trip that only scratches the surface of what you can do with this special cheese. Because BelGioioso’s stracchino has gotten me the closest to re-creating all of my Italian favorites, I now don’t have to check a suitcase full of cheese (something I’ve absolutely done before).

Buy: BelGioioso Stracchino Crescenza Cheese, $6.09 for 8 ounces at Instacart

What Italian grocery are you buying on repeat? Tell us about it in the comments.

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