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Saying Yes to Mozzarella on Pizza

By Peter R | Update Date: Aug 29, 2014 03:59 PM EDT

A new study has crowned Mozzarella cheese as most suited for pizza use. The study was published in the Journal of Food Science.

Assessing pizza browning, melting of cheese and bubbling with different cheese varieties including Mozzarella, Cheddar, Colby, Edam, Emmental, Gruyere and Provolone, the study found that Mozzarella works best, LA Weekly reported.

"Pizza branding and blistering seems like a totally trivial question, right? You stuff your pizza in the oven and it clearly is going to brown and blister. But it actually is dictated by a combination of composition and mechanical properties of the cheese itself," researcher Bryony James, associate professor, University of Auckland was quoted saying by Science World Report.

James and her team of researchers used cameras and software designed to measures pizza browning, blistering and oil content. They found that Mozzarella bubbles easily, resulting in perfect browning of the Italian dish that one in eight Americans savor every day.

Fox News quoted James explaining the reason behind mozzarella's crowning.

"Mozzarella has a lot of elasticity. If you look at it under a microscope, you see it has these channels of fat surrounded by protein," James said. The elasticity allows for easy bubbling.

The study found Cheddar does not bubble as it lacks elasticity but browns while Gruyere bubbles but does brown.

So does this mean the end of road for other varieties of cheese?

The research team has an answer - simply combine different cheese varieties with Mozzarella for the desired taste and flavor.

However researchers like John Lang, assistant professor of sociology at Occidental College, opined that the study was biased to a predetermined image of pizza.

"They were searching for the best elastic cheese that melts and blisters without burning and produces a certain amount of free oil. In a sense the game is rigged to match a certain predetermined image of a pizza," he told LA Weekly.

"Wolfgang Puck's signature smoked salmon pizza or N.Y.-style white pizza would not be around if the popular image of pizza prevailed."

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