FACTS: mmmmm...Mozzarella

By Erica

Although we've mainly focused on strong, pungent cheese on C:A J, we also have love for milder cheeses. My favorite mild cheese is fresh mozzarella. The string cheese type, processed mozzarella is alright, but I love the cloud-white, tennis-ball-shaped mozzarella that melts in your mouth.

There are many subspecies of mozzarella, but they are all made by cutting up and spinning cheese curds. High in moisture, mozzarella is tastiest the day it's made; it can be kept up to a week if stored in a brine. The string cheese mozzarella (or the shredded mozzarella sold by Kraft etc... it's all the same) is very low in moisture and usually made with skim milk. The fresh, high moisture mozzarella can be made with cows milk and is then called mozzarella fior de latte. My favorite type of mozzarella, mozzarella di bufala, is made from the milk of water buffalo.

Mozzarella is relatively easy to make, too! Dr. Frankhauser's Cheese Page, a fantastic resource for those who are interested in making cheese, has detailed instructions for making your own, complete with pictures. The basic steps are extracting the cheese curds (saving the whey to make ricotta), pouring hot water over the curds and spinning them into a nicely shaped ball, then dropping the ball into cold water to harden it a bit. There are a few more steps, so I've found a lovely youtube video (below) that shows the whole process. It's pretty neat to watch, so move your cursor down and press play!