Without question, the ideal melting cheese for pizzas, stromboli, and calzones is low-moisture mozzarella. Also known as block or “pizza” cheese, low-moisture mozzarella is what you find at your local supermarket and is the cheese pizzerias use for their pies because of its firm, shreddable texture, mild flavor, and meltability. We like it melted on sandwiches and in baked pastas, too.
To compare national brands of both whole-milk and part-skim low-moisture mozzarella, we brought together nine willing Fine Cooking tasters. We tasted the cheese in both melted form and straight out of the package, looking for a creamy, milky flavor with just a hint of sourness, a firm texture, and smooth melting capabilities.
Whole-milk and part-skim mozzarella are typically sold in 1-pound plastic-wrapped blocks. Sorrento whole-milk mozzarella ($4.69 per pound) made the grade with our tasters for its rich milkiness, delicate balance of sour and salty notes, and gooey stretchiness when melted. Polly-O whole-milk mozzarella ($4.69 per pound) was a close second for its smooth melt and subtly sweet milk flavor.
Sorrento part-skim mozzarella ($4.69 per pound) looked and tasted the most like a gourmet fresh mozzarella (see panel below), with its pale white coloring, fresh milkiness, and moist, stringy texture. It did not melt as well as its whole-milk counterpart, but it would still be a welcome addition to any pizza or calzone. The runner-up for part-skim mozzarella was again Polly-O ($4.69 per pound), which had an appealing string-cheese-like texture and creamy flavor, although some testers found it greasy and thick when melted.
