

How mozzarella became the perfect pizza cheese - Libertatea
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20141006-the-secrets-of-perfect-pizza

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jnardiello
Or maybe it's just because mozzarella is the most typical and wide-spread
cheese in Naple area (Italy) - where "pizza" was invented. Just a guess.

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frandroid
But other places might have tried to bake flat bread, sauce, vegetables with
cheese on it, and only the one which used mozza ended up spreading around.

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peatmoss
If you've never tried Georgian "suluguni" cheese, it is an amazing replacement
for slabs of fresh mozzarella. I just wish it was easier to come by. I've had
some success making it, but that has been inconsistent. I am not cut out to be
a cheese maker.

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jfaat
The biggest issue I take with this article and the study it references is that
they insist on calling the shredded abomination we consume in the US
"mozzarella" without so much as a nod to the real thing [1]. I can say fairly
confidently that Buffalo Mozzarella melts much more nicely than it's cow-milk
counterpart. The cheese they refer to here is not, in fact, the "perfect pizza
cheese".

[1][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozzarella](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozzarella)

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lobster_johnson
Note that there is a big difference between dried and "fresh" mozzarella.

The fresh [1] kind has a lot of water; it's typically sold either tightly
plastic-wrapped box, or in a bag or box in a bath of liquid. It's noticeably
squishy. If you use it as-is, your pizza will be a small sea of water. It
needs to be dried a little out before use.

The dry kind has been dried (it's a little more than that, but drying is the
important part) until its moisture content is around 45-52%, compared to at
least 60% for fresh mozzarella, and it's either a block or shredded. The low
moisture content means it lasts a long time in the fridge, and the long shefl
life makes it popular in restaurants.

The difference, on pizza, is how it melts. The wet kind just doesn't melt that
well; it turns into white globs with a kind of leathery exterior [2] and looks
not unlike fried egg whites. The dry kind melts much more evenly [3], and
doesn't have that same leathery texture.

Both types of mozzarella are definitely "real" mozzarella. The Italians even
have several types of classic Italian dried mozzarellas, such as scamorza. You
can also get smoked, dried mozzarella, for instance.

The true shredded abomination is the stuff that isn't cheese at all, but some
horrific stuff made from vegetable oil and food dyes, sometimes in the name of
being "healthier". Oh, and American cheese. There's no cheese in American
cheese.

Personally, I think buffalo mozzarella is overrated. You can get good and bad
buffalo-cheese pizza, and good and bad cow-cheese pizza; the big taste
difference is usually elsewhere, in my experience.

[1]
[http://www.cheese.com/media/img/cheese/Fresh_Mozzarella.jpeg](http://www.cheese.com/media/img/cheese/Fresh_Mozzarella.jpeg)

[2]
[http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/cleanplatecharlie/grimaldi...](http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/cleanplatecharlie/grimaldispizza.jpg)

[3] [http://bit.ly/1CQwsXW](http://bit.ly/1CQwsXW)

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jnardiello
Don't mean to troll, BUT scamorza isn't mozzarella. It's just another kind of
cheese. Different stuff

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lobster_johnson
You're right, I really meant mozzarella-like cheeses. In Italy there are other
variations on dry mozzarella, too, that is different from the stuff you find
in US stores.

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BigChiefSmokem
Making food is a lot like making musical instruments, or writing elegant code
for that matter. You can mass produce or machine generate it and it will be
decent, but to get that nuance - that warm sound, that rich texture, that
super edge case - you need human hands and human instinct behind the process.

Another example of how science and technology can sometimes be perfect to a
fault. Turns out, deep down, we don't like perfect.

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twiceaday
This is a heap of feel-good nonsense. You are simply referencing the meme of
home cooking and artisan hand crafted instruments without juatification.
Furthermore, the aforementioned items are all highly subjective and strictly
for human consumption so it is no surprise that human involvement is
paramount. What is the correct/best amount/type of human involvement?

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BigChiefSmokem
No it's from many years of experience in all of the stated domains (cooking,
coding, and crafting instruments with my own hands).

The grave mistake very logical people make is to think that they can define,
decipher, and manipulate all properties of any given domain without any regard
to that fact that no domain exists in a vacuum, and thus, not all thing in
this universe can be quantifiable.

Trying to quantify human involvement in anything is pretty much the same as
asking, "why are we here?".

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SnacksOnAPlane
I disagree. Everything is quantifiable. Everything comes down to physical
reactions that happen predictably. Even emotions like love and hate boil down
to patterns of neurons firing and hormone levels.

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RRiccio
I'm surprised they didn't mention that this is due to Neapolitan geography,
where the pizza was popularized in its current form.

The urban legend says that poor people just took the fresh/cheap ingredients
they had available: flour, tomato sauce from the Vesuvio area tomatoes,
mozzarella which is widely available in Campania along with olive oil and
basil, also used in abundance locally.

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ama729
Speaking about pizza, does anybody has the perfect recipe for the pie/whole
pizza? I saw once here from a obsessed chef but can't remember the link.
Thanks!

