Shoes, as they say, make the man. Shoelaces, though, caused as much heated debate in the schoolyard as did my apple and cheese sandwiches. (Guys, it’s like the morsels on a cheese plate in sandwich form. Come on!)

Anyway, just as everyone was mastering their signature shoelace-tying technique, along came the new breed of shoe with velcro straps to question convention. The zip-lock-bag shoes of a generation put convenience ahead of style. And sure, although it would have solved the conundrum of the laces of my left shoe constantly coming undone, I couldn’t part from my roots. I remained ‘old skool’ and kept tying a knot.

So it’s apt, as I’m making a mess of my first attempt at burrata making at Vannella Cheese in Sydney’s Marrickville, that my tutor, Giuseppe Minoia, likens the process to tying one’s shoes.

“You want to do a knot at the top to hold everything in. It’s like shoelaces – everyone does them up differently,” says Giuseppe.

Son of legendary cheesemaker Vito Minoia, Giuseppe is the next generation and a firm believer in legacy and tradition. His father started making hand-stretched soft cheese in Puglia, Italy, more than 40 years ago. He brought his skills to Cairns before moving the family and business to Sydney’s inner west.

At Vannella, they keep burrata making ‘old skool’, too. Burrata (it means ‘buttered’ in Italian) is comprised of a thin outside layer of bocconcini. Inside is stracciatella (a hand-spun stretched-curd cheese) mixed with cream.

To produce their bocconcini, Vannella pasteurises raw cow’s milk at 72°C for 15 seconds. It’s then pumped into a series of vats where it’s cultured, transforming it from liquid to solid.

“Then we cut it with knives and break it up, which makes the curd split from the whey,” says Giuseppe.

The whey goes off to make the company’s ricotta, while the curd is put into a stretching machine to cook with water at 96°C. This stretching gives the curd its flavour and texture.

“You want the outside nice and thin. Because ideally what you want to eat of the burrata is the inside,” says Giuseppe. “[The outside] is just to make it look pretty, hold the product together and allow you to use it any way you like.”

Giuseppe takes me to Francesco, who churns out about 180 kilograms of burrata a day – all by hand. He grabs the stretched curd from the 96°C water, spreads it over his palm and holds it under a tap. A press of a foot pedal sees a dollop of stracciatella squirt into the middle of the bocconcini. Francesco seals it by pressing his fingers across the top, then stretches it with long loops to tie the top knot that holds everything in. It’s a tight, firm, glistening 100-gram ball with a beautiful bow on top.

Seems simple enough. Of course, 96°C water and soft, supple writer’s hands do not make for great bedfellows. And the fluidity of the ‘solid’ curd means it stretches and droops while I’m trying to manipulate it. It’s like trying to hold onto a fish out of water.

As a result, my attempt looks like an over-filled water balloon being held by the knot; it sags low with a bulbous bottom. I best leave it to the professionals.

Not all burrata are made like this. Some larger producers pump stracciatella into the bocconcini. No need to stretch it by hand and tie a knot. Sounds like those velcro-wearing warriors turned into cheesemakers. While it doesn’t detract from the finished product, the visual and eating experiences are slightly different.

But Vannella has never considered doing it another way. “It’s the traditional way of making it,” says Giuseppe. “It’s just how we do it.” Every burrata is hand-tied, bagged one by one and placed 10 to a bucket with a little water. It means each cheese is protected, has a two-week shelf life and can be used however a chef pleases.

At Sydney’s Automata, Clayton Wells injects Vannella burrata with shellfish oil and serves it with salted kombu. The cuisines of Italy and Asia, traditional and modern, masterfully tied together.