The Country That Put a Man on the Moon Still Can’t Make Good Cheese

Pizza is like golf. You always think you’ll do better the next time you do it. It’s full of variables, so you’re never really sure you’re doing it as well as possible.

Actually, this is not true. I make Sicilian pizza perfectly. I should have said “thin New York style pizza is like golf.” It’s very different.

In my pizza quest, which got going in earnest in about 2009, I have tried a zillion different things. Every flour known to man. Lots of cheeses, including Grande, which a lot of pros love. Many different tomato products. I baked with a stone. Then I moved to a steel. I baked at varying temperatures. I’ve tried everything except for a special pizza oven, which is not needed if you make New York style pizza.

I thought I was sure of two things: Sicilian pizza could be made well with any flour, but New York style worked best with bread flour. Now I question myself.

My friend Mike taught me how to make pizza, and he uses AP flour. I tried it in the past and didn’t like it. Then after I moved to the farm, I found out I had been using way too much yeast in my pizzas. This put me back into research. Change one thing, and you have to go back and look at everything else. I looked at flour again.

If you want to make pizza dough in the morning and have pizza later the same day, you need about 1/8 tsp. of instant dry yeast per 100 grams of flour. You can go higher for more speed, but as you cross the 1/2-teaspoon threshold, the flavor of the dough starts to suffer. There is really no reason to use a lot of yeast. If you want to speed up fermentation, you can make your dough with warm water and let it rise at 100°.

I used to use several times as much yeast as I needed.

By the way, there is nothing wrong with instant dry yeast. It’s more reliable than active dry yeast, and you get the same results. I’m not sure why people use other yeasts. You can always get fancy and make a live starter you feed every day like a pet, but if you’re satisfied with yeast, instant is the way to go.

Lately I’ve been using AP flour in thin pizza, and I have no complaints. I don’t think I’d use it for garlic rolls, but they’re not quite the same as pizza.

I used to be obsessed with crusts that were somewhat hard and chewy. In recent months, I’ve been more interested in softer crusts. I had tremendous success making hard crusts with high-gluten flour and little or no oil. To get a softer crust that isn’t like Wonder Bread, I am now using AP flour and about 3% olive oil. The percentage is figured in relationship to the weight of the flour. I like pies made with 180 grams of flour, so I use around 1.25 teaspoons of oil. The actual number for 3% is 1.16 teaspoons, but I’m not going to be that picky.

I’m also trying to process the dough as little as possible. Overkneading can increase toughness. I “knead” using a food processor, and it’s really fast, so I have to watch it carefully.

Cheese continues to be a challenge.

When I started, I figured whatever they had at the grocery store was fine, and then I learned it’s generally too dry or too oily. The shredded stuff is nearly always very dry, and they coat it with potato starch and/or tiny fibers of wood cellulose to keep it from caking. I think the cellulose turns the cheese into a hard composite, but I don’t know. Anyway, dry cheese gives you a texture like vinyl, and it burns fast.

I used to live near Costco and Gordon Food Service, and I found I could do very well with a 50/50 combination of Costco bagged mozzarella and GFS sliced provolone. Now, these stores are over an hour away.

Back when I was in Miami, I also tried a bunch of Grande products. They melt really well, but I thought they were a little bland. Not long ago, I was at the GFS in Orlando, and I saw they stocked Grande. On a lark, I bought a bag of East Coast blend, which is half part-skim and half whole-milk. It’s shredded, but they don’t put paper mill waste on the shreds.

For some reason, I like this cheese much better than I used to. Next time I’m in Orlando, I’ll get more.

I used to be frustrated by food service cheese because it came in big packages which got moldy in a hurry. Internet pizza nuts have shown me the light, however. Cheese companies say mozzarella should not be frozen, but the pizza nuts swear it does no harm, so I plan to buy a block, cut it up, and freeze one-pie portions.

The nuts say freezing block cheese is better than freezing shredded.

Because of my location, I have done a lot of testing to find better cheese locally, and one answer was Boar’s Head mozzarella from the Publix deli. It’s a low-moisture cheese, but it’s made from whole milk. It works, but it’s very greasy. It also costs nearly $11 per pound, which is more than twice what top-grade restaurant supply cheese costs.

I found a restaurant supply place near me, but they didn’t have any highly-regarded cheese. They had shredded Roseli cheese, part-skim. It’s made by U.S. Foods, a respected cheese supplier, but this particular product is made with wood dust, and it’s also too dry to make a good pizza. I know, because I bought a bag.

I was thinking of throwing the Roseli cheese out, but I got a wild hair and decided to try mixing it with Boar’s Head. Today I made a 60/40 blend, and it was not bad at all. It melted well, and it wasn’t greasy. It was slightly dryer than I wanted, however, so I think the key is to go 70/30.

It’s annoying that virtually nobody makes a proper shredded pizza cheese for consumers. Anyone who buys grocery shredded cheese knows it doesn’t work. It turns brown in a hurry, the top turns into leather, and it gets grainy. How is it that companies like Kraft and Sargento have been making pizza cheese since the dawn of time and haven’t noticed the problem? They’re not even trying.

The sauce problem is just as bad. I have to buy huge cans of Stanislaus Saporito sauce and freeze them in board-shaped portions I can cut up as needed. You would think there would be one really good national brand of pizza sauce or tomato paste, but there isn’t. I’ve done okay with Glen Muir organic paste and Winn-Dixie paste, but if I want a home run, I buy Stanislaus.

I have like 60 pounds of it.

Anyway, the big message I wanted to convey today is that you can make a pretty good pizza if you get Boar’s Head mozzarella and cut it with a little shredded low-quality cheese. It’s a pain, because you have to shred the Boar’s Head yourself, but you do what you have to do.

I should also say I found a pretty good pizza cutter. I have a big stainless rocking cutter, and most people love those. I don’t think much of it. I like 4″ wheels. I had one made by OXO, and I thought it was great until the hollow plastic handle came off and poured dishwater on my cheese.

It was surprisingly hard to find anything better. I decided to check sites that supply pizzerias, since they have to sell things that actually work. I found a Winco 4″ cutter with a solid plastic handle. So far, it works fine, and it can’t hold water. Winco is a well-known restaurant equipment company. I have their stainless bowls.

The Winco cutter is NSF certified, and it doesn’t seem to mind the dishwasher at all.

So, to sum up all the useful info:

1. AP flour works fine for New York Style pizza. I would stick with High-gluten or bread flour for garlic rolls.
2. Use very little yeast if you want a good pizza crust.
3. Instant yeast is preferable for people who don’t want to deal with starters.
4. Roseli shredded mozzarella is too dry to be any good, but if you mix it into Boar’s Head, which is too oily, you get a pretty decent pizza. This may also work with nasty shredded cheeses sold in grocery stores.
5. Grande makes hassle-free pizza cheese, both shredded and block.
6. Freezing mozzarella won’t hurt it, and you should probably stick with block cheese when freezing.
7. OXO 4″ pizza cutters have hollow handles that collect dishwater, so try a Winco.
8. If you like a softer crust, add more oil, use AP flour, and go easy on the kneading.