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let's start with the obvious which is
that mozzarella is the best cheese for
pizza says science seriously in this
2014 study researchers found that only
mozzarella or a cheese blend based on
mozzarella will provide the browning and
stretching properties that most people
expect of pizza but what kind of moths
mozzarella comes in some different forms
I'm gonna show you experiments with five
of them to me there is a clear winner
but certainly it depends on your tastes
and what style of pizza you're trying to
make let's start with mozzarella in its
purest form fresh mozzarella
what exactly is fresh Matsui in the food
science department here at the
university of wisconsin-madison yeah
it's kind of funny that we're talking to
an Irishman living in the American
Midwest about an Italian cheese but dr.
Lucy knows his stuff and they know from
cheese in Wisconsin but yeah he says of
course historically mots is from italy
in many cases they probably think it was
made originally from water buffalo
so that mozzarella would look more like
the fresh mozzarella that we might use
maybe on salads and things but that kind
of soft high moisture milky because the
water buffalo produces milk that's a lot
of fat high-fat product I always think
that fresh mots tastes like milk
solidified which is to say it's sweet
it's fresh it's subtle and most
significantly for pizza making it is wet
you can see some of the way spilling out
of there before I even cut into it and
yeah most people usually cut or tear
fresh mozzarella then shred it because
watch what happens when I shred it it
just smoosh --is it's too soft she
cannot take the strain Cap'n now I'm
gonna put this on a pizza and I'm doing
what you could call a New York style
pizza which is very wide and very thin
and has a solid sheet of cheese across
the entire top I will bake it on my
preheated pizza steel at 550 Fahrenheit
convection that's like 290 C that's
about as hot as anyone can get a home
oven and that looks pretty nice but when
I bite into it that Pizza is wet not
moist wet the crust is unappetizing ly
soggy
there is simply too much water in fresh
matzo there are of course other styles
of pizza and you can get a really good
one right here in beautiful Macon
Georgia at just tapped we're a long way
from Naples but Korie here is making a
damn fine Neapolitan style pizza that
sauce is just pureed san marzano
tomatoes straight out of the can with a
little seasoning in it on goes some
fresh basil leaves and here comes the
fresh mozzarella he likes to put on big
chunks over the basil to protect it but
note how he is not covering that pizza
with cheese I would say the biggest
single difference between Neapolitan
style and NewYork style is this
Neapolitan style has much less cheese
splotches of cheese rather than a sheet
of cheese why because Neapolitan style
is made with fresh mozzarella pizza
without it getting soggy by the way
check out these tabletop ovens they've
got it just tapped 700 Fahrenheit
convection that gets you a product
strikingly similar to that from a
wood-fired brick oven this innovation is
rapidly improving the quality of barroom
pizza all over the world and for that I
am grateful delicious but say you want
to make a different style of pizza you
might want to turn to the kind of
mozzarella that they developed not in
Italy but right here in the United
States it was after the Second World War
when American soldiers who'd fought
their way through Italy brought their
new taste for pizza home to big dairy
producing regions like Wisconsin where
dr. Lucia's in the broader post-war
drive toward mass production they found
that fresh mots
had problems it's just too wet and soft
to work with on a commercial scale it's
messy and it's not very shelf stable so
American cheese makers in the Midwest
invented low-moisture part-skim
mozzarella often referred to in the
cheese industry simply as pizza cheese
by removing some of the fat and a lot of
the way they got a firmer more stable
product that's better for mass
production how'd they get the moisture
out you standardized the milk to a
little bit lower fat content that's the
first step the the process then involves
adding rennet which is an enzyme that
coagulants the milk but it also adds
particular bacterial cultures that
ferment the lactose is present in the
milk and they drop the pH down they then
take it and they put it into a cooker
stretcher and then they'll warm it up
the car temperature is probably around
60 degrees C and they'll heat it up that
kind of temperature it's kind of like a
heating or a pasteurizing type of step
in activates some of the bacteria and
enzymes in the product and it helps to
extend the shelf life and check out the
new york-style pizza I made with it nice
browning on the cheese crust is crispy
and dry the cheese itself is firmer and
almost has a little snap to it when it's
cooled down a little bit that snap is
why I love lukewarm pizza okay now you
might be wondering why not just use
fresh mozzarella can do you just slice
it up you press on it with some paper
towels or something and now that is much
drier but let's go back to what dr. Lucy
was saying the manufacturers of low
moisture mots and do not squeeze the
moisture out physically they do it
chemically first they do it with the
enzyme rennet which is what all cheese
starts with and then they squeeze out
more moisture with acid and that affects
the taste not just the texture with a
more traditional low moisture pizza
cheese like this one made by grande in
Wisconsin there acidifying the cheese
with bacterial fermentation Palio
another very popular Pizza cheese made
in the New York area doesn't with
vinegar instead so historically if you
think about its roots of some of these
cheese's is vinegar or sour wine would
have been very common product around to
acidify rather than adding some bacteria
to do it so it's very common but
regardless of how you acidify at low
moisture mozzarella has a sharper taste
and than the fresh stuff and you cannot
replicate that taste by just squeezing
the water out of fresh mods and those
more acidic qualities are key to New
York style pizza which is my main jam
another feature of New York style pizza
is that it's often made with full fat
low moisture mozzarella not part skin if
you go to pizza making dot-com a lot of
the New York style pizza cooks there
refer to it by the initialism WM LM
whole milk low moisture relative to the
part skin kind this is a much harder
product to find in grocery stores and
dr. Lucy says there's a reason for that
the first being the grease layer that
you can get from using a higher fat
cheese that might not be what everybody
really likes you know in terms of
general consumers they might not
to be too greasy on the pizza second
thing is - is that when you take out the
fat the cheese tends to be firmer if you
ever bought low-moisture part-skim in a
store you'll see it scars firm when it's
young and it's easy to cut it's easy to
shred so the machine of what we call the
machinability factor for large-scale
manufacturer or large-scale conversion
into shreds is a lot easier all that
said I am hardly the only person who
prefers the rich flavor that you get
from a full fat cheese but where do you
get it if it's not in the cheese case at
the grocery store they might have it at
the deli counter which is where I got
this
Boar's Head whole milk low-moisture
cheese when I bake a pizza with this
yeah I get some grease but to me
flavor-wise that is absolutely delicious
really superior to the parts kimchi's
though the Boar's Head brand is not my
favorite pizza cheese I can't get my
favorite pizza cheese anymore I used to
use this full fat low moisture Galvani
mots that they sold molded into sticks
for string cheese this is an unexpected
form in which you might be able to get
the product that you're after that was
the best cheese for pizza I was ever
able to buy at my grocery store here in
Macon Georgia
but it seems Galvani is only selling the
part skin sticks now and when I
requested an interview with them about
all of this they declined whenever I
talked about my struggle to find full
fat low moisture mozzarella here in my
small southern city I always get people
telling me that I should buy this indeed
I can buy this here and it is a full fat
mots Palio is a very popular brand with
New York style pizza joints but this is
not poly oz low-moisture cheese this is
they only sell it in giant loafs for
commercial use so if you're going to get
it from a store you're gonna get it at
the deli counter that is not this I'm
not totally sure what this is but if you
put it side by side with a true
low-moisture mots you can see how much
softer and wetter it is I would call it
medium moisture and I don't really like
it for pizza it has this weird property
where it rises a lot in the oven which
tends to make it boil over and that
pizza is a little bit wet I'm also not
wild about the flavor either I don't
know what this cheese is that they sell
retail but it is not the same cheese
that they sell in big 8 pound loaf stew
Pizza Shops if you don't believe me look
they don't even have the same
nutritional facts listed it's not the
same product I have sent many queries
about this to both Palio and to its
company Kraft Heinz and I have received
no response across months if you live in
the u.s. there is one place where you
almost certainly can find whole milk
low-moisture mots and that is Walmart
they make this I do not think it's a
very good cheese but at least it's the
right style assuming that this is the
style that you're after which I usually
am but if you live in a big city you
might have lots of better options
certainly you can always fall back on
the part skin low moisture moths which
you might like better anyway and it's
ubiquitous also ubiquitous is the same
cheese sold in pre-shredded form which
is the last option we shall explore
today it's very tempting you just buy a
bag open it up and shake it on but
there's a problem
this bag doesn't just contain cheese it
also contains an anti-caking blend in
this case corn starch potato starch and
calcium sulfate if you didn't add an
anti-caking agent whether it's docked or
something else to it they you put it in
a bag and you know if you pack that bag
away in the fridge after a while it just
kind of connects to the ball yeah so the
anti-caking powder can prevent that from
happening but there is a catch it can
interfere with the melting and browning
of the cheese those materials themselves
might not melt at the temperatures that
we're doing the pizza baking it and if
there's too much on it's almost like
you've kind of battered or breaded your
shreds that the outside doesn't really
melt even if the inside cheese wants to
melt at the temperature so that could be
one issue this the second issue is they
may also soak up moisture that is
released from during the the baking
process and because they soak up the
moisture the moisture the surface
becomes too dry and if it becomes too
dry then you have more likely to have it
like almost like you're toasting it and
the latter scenario is clearly what
happened to my pie here by the time that
pizza was done the pre-shredded cheese
was burned this does not mean that you
can't make a good pizza with
pre-shredded cheese you absolutely can
dr. Lucy says this is simply a quality
control issue at the factory some
producers just put in way too much of
that anti-caking mix maybe they don't
care that it's gonna mess up your pizza
they just care about how their product
looks on the Shelf all I can tell you is
that if one brand of cheese isn't
working for
you try another there's lots of options
and they're all made in slightly
different ways pizza in its purest form
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luck trying to find the right cheese for
your pizza and really when you do and
you bake your pizza please tag me on it
these people do on Instagram it's
awesome I love it