Kirkland Conquers All

February 25th, 2010

Cheese Test

I had an interesting experience today.

I went to my church to make pizza for the lunch crowd. Sadly, they just made a decision to quit making lunch on weekdays, so today was my first and only effort. But I made it count.

I had three bags of Grande cheese, provided by a rep. I was hoping this stuff would be at least as good as the blend I already use, because it would be cheaper, and I’d be able to have it delivered instead of driving to get it.

The cheese I really wanted to try is half provolone and half mozzarella. The rep was out of it. I won’t have it until next week. Today I had whole-milk mozzarella, East Coast Blend (whole-milk and part-skim mozzarella, blended), and Cheddar blend (mozzarella, cheddar, and provolone).

I made a number of pies, including Sicilian and thin pies. And the decision was unanimous: Costco rules. My old blend, made from Costco mozzarella and GFS provolone, is better than any cheese I used today.

I should add that on the Sicilians, I combined Grande with GFS provolone. On the thin pies, I used Grande by itself.

The whole-milk mozzarella bakes beautifully, without burning. But it has very little flavor. It’s buttery and stretchy. There is nothing offensive about it. But the pizza didn’t have the addictive flavor I got with the other cheese blend.

The East Coast Blend was very similar, except that it browned. And it didn’t brown in a particularly appetizing way. I’ve noticed that browned provolone tastes much better and has a much better texture than browned mozzarella. The East Coast Blend didn’t taste all that great browned.

The Cheddar Blend had a nice sour cheddar kick, but as I wrote last night, oil pours out of it. Not oil, really. Butterfat. It’s a little excessive. Add two fatty meat toppings, and you’d have a grease pond.

This is quality cheese. And I know you can make excellent pizza with it. I’ve had many great pizzas that were made with Grande cheese, unless they used something else and lied about it. But it’s not ideal for my recipe.

The mozzarella/provolone blend is my last hope. If it doesn’t work, I’ll have to keep using Costco cheese until I find something new.

A guy on a forum suggested a five-cheese blend sold by a food service company called Roma. I may try to track that down. Another guy says Grande’s reliability and cooking qualities are what make it great, and that you’re expected to soup up the flavor with added cheese.

It’s shocking how pizza can surprise you. Ingredient changes can make gigantic differences in your product, and they may be changes the natures of which you can’t anticipate. If Edmund Kean had been a pizza chef, he probably would have said, “Dying is easy. Pizza is hard.”

I also taught a friend how to make pizza today. He had no real problems. After another lesson, he should be able to fill in for me.

I used the church’s second oven today, for thin pizza. That thing is wonderful. The pizza crust gets nice and hard on the outside, and the dough blows up well, and the bottom of the crust gets well done. I don’t think I can make it work for Sicilian at the thin-pizza temperature, but maybe I’m wrong.

In case you have a commercial gas oven, I’ll tell you what I did. The oven has a 575° thermostat, and I turned it past that to “broil.” It has no broiling element, so “broil” just means “real hot.” The stone gets too hot to crisp up a Sicilian crust, but it’s just right for thin pizza.

They want to start doing pizza on Tuesday nights, when they have their “Rendezvous” service. The pastor’s son presides, and about a thousand people show up.

Things are getting very consistent now; the bugs are falling out of the system. We should be able to produce excellent pizza with good reliability in the near future.

4 Responses to “Kirkland Conquers All”

  1. aelfheld Says:

    The original quote has been variously attributed to George Bernard Shaw, Edmund Kean (cited by Alan Swann (Peter O’Toole) in “My Favorite Year”), Edmund Gwenn, Edwin Booth, and Donald Wolfit.

    Burke was not likely interested in being comedic.

    Though he might well have been interested in pizza.

  2. Jim Says:

    Don’t let anyone give you gruff about pizza not being blessed.

    “Pizza on Earth, and to Men, Goodwill”.

    I think I remembered that one correctly?

    Jim
    Sunk New Dawn
    Galveston, TX

  3. Steve H. Says:

    This happens to me all the time. I write a blog post, and while I’m writing it, I put something in that I’m not sure about, intending to check it later. Then I forget to check.
    .
    I’m going with Edmund Kean.

  4. JeffW Says:

    Is there a GFS or Members-Mark (Sam’s Club) Mozzarella that works with the GFS Provolone? I’m out of my big bag of Sam’s Mozzarella, so I think it time to perfect the cheese.
    .
    I don’t have a Costco membership (Sam’s carries more tools), but if there’s no other option, I’ll sign up to get the cheese 🙂