Cheese makes pizza even more delicious so if you can’t find a source to buy European-flavored mozzarella cheese, you need to learn how to make it yourself so you can look up information on homemade mozzarella for pizza online workshop.
Mozzarella has become the perfect cheese for pizza. In fact, it’s been scientifically proven to outperform cheddar, colby, edam, emmental, gruyere, and provolone, which are all fairly common alternatives.
Mozzarella is every pizza’s best friend. So gooey and golden every time, it’s no wonder no other cheese has surpassed it since pizza was invented in 1889. Let’s look at the story of mozzarella.
Buffalo In Italy and Homemade Mozzarella for Pizza
Mozzarella, a soft white cheese hailing from southern Italy that is traditionally made from the milk of Italian buffalo using a special cheese-making technique known as the pasta filata method. Like many ancient foods, there are many theories about how mozzarella first appeared. The real story begins with how buffalo were introduced to Italy. Unsurprisingly, the exact details of this story are also a little fuzzy. However, there are several theories.
Many believe that the buffalo were introduced by the Goths towards the end of the reign of the Roman Empire. In the 16th century, the wild buffalo population in southern Italy was thriving, largely untouched by human interference.
After that, the domestication and husbandry of buffalo in the Campania region of southern Italy further began to develop as people increasingly recognized its milk as a suitable alternative to regular cow’s milk for making dairy products such as cheese and butter.
Another popular theory is that mozzarella can be traced as far back as the third century when monks from San Lorenzo di Capua distributed homemade bread and cheese called “mozza” to the needy. However, this early variation was made from sheep’s milk and so is not considered a traditional “mozzarella di bufala.”
Regardless of its origin, in the 20th century mozzarella was valued throughout Europe and beyond, with the region of Averso, Caserta being home to the prized cheese. At that time, production was, and still is, controlled by two major manufacturers who made three different types of mozzarella.
Mozzarella received the Traditional Privileges Guarantee certification from the EU in 1998, which limits the manufacture of cheese to traditional recipes. Interestingly, it doesn’t say which milk needs to be used, so mozzarella can also be made from cow’s milk. If you want authentic, buffalo milk is the way to go. That being said, in the modern culinary world, various types of mozzarella are used on pizza. What matters is how it’s made.
Filata Pasta and Homemade Mozzarella for Pizza
Homemade mozzarella for pizza made to stretch rather than melt. This is a difficult cheese to make. Very close to toffee making. Lots of pulling and folding. Cheddar isn’t pulled, it’s salted and pressed. Melts very well and will melt. Great for cheese on toast and works well in any oven for pizza.
The taste and texture of mozzarella is what our taste buds are used to and expect. You’re just not really serious with traditional recipes that have existed for a long time. There’s no stickiness to the mozzarella is part of the pizza experience. You just don’t get that with other types of cheese like cheddar. The flavor is much milder than cheddar and allows other flavors such as ketchup (and other toppings) to be more pronounced, rather than overpowering each other.
Mozzarella gets its soft, stringy texture from a very specific production technique known as pasta filata which translates roughly to “spun paste” in Italian. This process creates what is known in English as stretched curd cheese.
Filata paste process, the process is like this: Milk is heated first to make it curdle. It is then allowed to rest for an hour before the curd is cut into small pieces and the remaining liquid known as whey is drained. The curd is then set aside to rest a while.
After resting, the curd is soaked for hours in a whey bath or very hot water. When making mozzarella in Bufala Campania the whey temperature is 95 °C. When the curd begins to float, the liquid is drained. They are then combined, ready to go through a vigorous kneading process until a soft, elastic texture is achieved.
According to the mozzarella trade association in bufala: The cheese maker kneads it with his hands, like a baker making bread, until he gets a smooth, shiny paste, the strands of which he pulls out and cuts, forming individual mozarella. Like that, simple and ldelicious.
Why Is It So Good For Making Pizza?
Back in 2014, an international team of scientists started to try and discern what cheese is best for pizza making. The paper’s abstract says that the purpose of this study was to measure the baking properties of pizza and the performance of different types of cheese.
This study looked at elasticity, oiliness, moisture, water activity, galactose, and baking temperature for each type of cheese. A number of different cheeses were analyzed including mozzarella, cheddar, colby, edam, emmental, gruyere and provolone.
What they discovered was that mozzarella cheese was scientifically the best cheese for pizza; the bubbliest, stickiest, most melty of them all. Mozzarella has a lot of elasticity, says study co-author Dr. Bryony James. If you look at it under a microscope, you will see that it has fatty ducts surrounded by protein.
Here’s Manoosh using only the freshest, tastiest ingredients on the pizza, including the best mozzarella you can get your hands on (plus some delicious, delicious vegan cheese).
If all this talk of delicious, gooey cheese makes you hungry, stop by an artisan pizza shop or look for homemade mozzarella for pizza online workshop such as De Grunteman.