Low moisture mozzarella

[Stephen Tashiro]

Online cooking experts such those at America's Test Kitchen say not use low moisture mozzarella cheese for pizzas. Yet at local stores, almost all the mozzarella cheese on sale is the low moisture type. What makes the low moisture type so popular?

[roger wiegand]

A shelf life of months? I use only fresh mozzarella for my pizza.

[Mike Soaper]

A shelf life of months? I use only fresh mozzarella for my pizza.

That, and maybe

If it's shredded the added cellulose to keep it from clumping sucks some of the moisture out of the cheese?

There's a market for folks who think pizza cheese is always shredded?

What was their reasoning for not using low moisture mozzarella cheese for pizzas? flavor? melting point? browns/burns too quickly?

[Warren Lake]

been using TreStella for ever, ill check the moisture with my Delmhorst next time :)

[Edwin Santos]

Give sliced low moisture mozzarella a try. It doesn't have the anti-caking agents added to shredded to keep it from clumping. Plus, when layered on the pizza it will melt into a nice continuous "sheet" of cheese.

IMO you can't beat fresh mozzarella. Belgioso is a good brand. Costco stocks it at a good price, and what you don't use for your pizza you can use to make a caprese salad.

[Dwayne Watt]

High moisture mozaarella takes very high, intense heat to evaporate the water and properly melt/brown before the crust and other pizza components burn. Most home ovens cannot get hot enough for high moisture mozz. It takes 700-800 degree ovens (brick ovens) to get good results. Low moisture cheese behaves properly in home ovens along with the other components of the recipe.

[Kev Williams]

A few months ago some friends of mine- Italians- gave us 3lbs of this stuff-
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-- no where on the package are the words 'low moisture',
and it's true because it's literally floating in moisture--
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Still have 2 pounds left. Why? Because it tastes like- nothing. And I mean Absolutely Nothing.
Mozzarella doesn't have much flavor anyway, but what flavor it DOES have is WONDERFUL.
A nice, just-right stiff-to-the-touch block of store-bought mozzarella is one of my most favorite things, and
hard to come by sometimes, it's usually too soft. And if it's too soft it lacks flavor...

This stuff is beyond 'too soft'. The slime stuff kids play with is stiffer than this is. Hard to slice even... I can't
imagine trying to grate it for pizza! I will say that it is actually nice to chew, and it doesn't taste bad,
it just plain doesn't TASTE at all! You could probably use this stuff as a joke to trick someone into
thinking they got Covid
;)
Maybe this just isn't a good brand, I don't know.

[Dave Zellers]

Hard to slice even...

Not with a wire slicer. Like butta. As thin as you want.

[roger wiegand]

Hard to slice even... I can't
imagine trying to grate it for pizza! .

Well, you don't grate it. Or slice it. At least for a nice pizza Napoletana. You tear it off in chunks. In Naples they would use fresh cheese that hadn't been pressed into balls-- ideally made from buffalo milk collected that morning, made into cheese, and never refrigerated between cow and serving.I'm sure that would be illegal here, but the taste and texture is heavenly.

Here's what my pizza ends up looking like:
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It is a very different style than Dominos, admittedly.

[Stan Calow]

We have a restaurant where they will make mozzarella at your table in a couple of minutes. Pretty simple ingredients and just as fresh as possible.

[Alan Rutherford]

I make a lot of pizza at home and since I'm making the crusts from scratch I consider it "my" pizza. There's nothing really special about it, just something good I can have on the table in a predictable time. The recipe depends on what we have on hand, usually mozarella (low-moisture, part skim) and maybe some cheddar, which I grate on the pizza. We never buy pre-shredded cheese. I bought a 2-pack of "real" mozarella a few months ago and didn't like it any more than Kev did. In fact we just threw out the unopened 2nd pound because it molded in the package. We didn't like pizza made with fresh mozarella any more than the other stuff and pulling off chunks of cheese to make the pizza just isn't how I do it.

I take most of what they say on America's Test Kitchen as Gospel but much of the Internet and I disagree with them on this one.

[Paul F Franklin]

Personally I find mozzarella too bland by itself for pizza so I use about half smoked provolone and half mozzarella. I'll add some sharp cheddar sometimes too.

[Stephen Tashiro]

What was their reasoning for not using low moisture mozzarella cheese for pizzas?


More precisely, the Test Kitchen objects to shredded low moisture mozzarella because it has anti-caking additives.

An elaborate discussion of various types of mozzarella cheese and their effect on pizza:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxlet-gq4Ho
That video (09:38) says the anti-caking agents tend to leave a dry crust over the cheese.

[Alan Rutherford]

More precisely, the Test Kitchen objects to shredded low moisture mozzarella because it has anti-caking additives....

There's an easy solution to that problem.


...We never buy pre-shredded cheese....

[Kev Williams]

There's an easy solution to that problem.
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The cheese grater attachment in our house gets used a LOT :)

As to the anti-caking additives, in my experience they seem to have a secondary benefit, the grated cheese we buy seems to take much longer to develop mold than block cheese...

[Edwin Santos]

463368
The cheese grater attachment in our house gets used a LOT :)

As to the anti-caking additives, in my experience they seem to have a secondary benefit, the grated cheese we buy seems to take much longer to develop mold than block cheese...

While traveling in Europe, I learned that cheese is bordering on religion for the French.
Once a local told me that the difference in the two countries is that cheese in France is alive, whereas cheese in the US is dead.
So dead, they store it in a refrigerated morgue and sell it in a body bag.
He would probably say the anti-caking agent additives are the work of the embalmer. Only the French.

[roger wiegand]

While traveling in Europe, I learned that cheese is bordering on religion for the French.
Once a local told me that the difference in the two countries is that cheese in France is alive, whereas cheese in the US is dead.
So dead, they store it in a refrigerated morgue and sell it in a body bag.
He would probably say the anti-caking agent additives are the work of the embalmer. Only the French.

That is hilarious! (and, sadly, pretty much true) It is always a wonder to me that we put up with such bad food in this country. It's certainly possible to find wonderful food here, but generally not at the grocery store. It's also certainly possible to find bad food in France or Italy, but you have to seek it out. The food at the gas station/rest stop on the highway outside Rome was better than 95% of the Italian restaurants I've eaten at in the US-- all fresh ingredients, freshly prepared; no pink plastic tomatoes tolerated.

[Kev Williams]

to me 'wonderful food' is what tastes good. 'Gourmet' food just doesn't do it for me. My 'gourmet food' is a Papa Murphy's Chicago stuffed pizza. ;) -Every day I watch Rachel Ray make some new 'really easy' weird food with a dozen or more ingredients, half of which I don't like, the other half I've never heard of.

Two of my favorite things to eat: Minute Rice or elbow macaroni floating in V8 juice, nothing else. :)

[Eduard Nemirovsky]

Two of my favorite things to eat: Minute Rice or elbow macaroni floating in V8 juice, nothing else. :)
You are easy to please :D
Ed.

[Mike Soaper]

Regarding cheese for pizza, I've been using Galbani whole milk chunk mozzarella from Bj's, 2lb blocks.