It’s a simple fact that fresh Mozzarella is the number-one melting paradise on any pizza. In fact, mozzarella is to pizza what leprosy is to diseases…or Jack the Ripper is to serial killers, bad analogies? Maybe, but using cheese that you have fabricated with your own hands shouldn’t be a scary task.
Melting mozzarella from curd takes the seemingly simple endeavor of making a pizza to the next culinary level. This old-school method is seldom used in these days of corporate cheese manufacturing but taking the time to craft mozzarella makes a pizza very personal. This is the level of the long-ago craftsman who took pride and responsibility in cooking and operated with the gratification that every aspect of their pizza was simple and perfect!
There is a big difference between making fresh mozzarella and using pre-made mozzarella. The melt on any pizza is more buttery with a tinge of yellow you can’t get with corporate mozzarella which tends to leach out a milky sputum over a pizza when cooked with high heat.
Now, it seems as though everyone has their own method to melt mozzarella from fresh curd but I rely on what an old Italian guy named Giuseppe showed me on the cliffs of Positano, Italy in 2011. It is a simple and straightforward way whose only tenant is, “Be patient, let the curd melt itself”. This has worked for me, so I stick with it.
Some mozzarella-melters take the slow method of heating the curd with hotter and hotter water while pulling and stretching over and over. I use a simpler method of holding smallish pieces on my pizza ovens until just warmer than room temp, (78-85 degrees) then pouring the hot, salty water over them as you can see in this video.
And here’s the Pizza I made with this mozzarella. Please forgive the abruptness of the starts and finishes, we were in the middle of service at the time.
I hope you get the time to make fresh mozzarella. It’s a great experience!
