A Little Cheese History

Despite several other cheeses are increasing in popularity as the pizza cheese, mozzarella cheese is still by and large considered “the” cheese for pizza toppings. Even those pies that are sporting the latest and best cheese combinations almost always include mozzarella as a must, and the processed designer cheese products that have been developed specifically as pizza cheeses are only meant to be “new and improved” versions of the traditional mozzarella (but why mess with a good thing?).

For those of us who love the Melbourne Pizza, it’s fun to know a little more about the history of the products that make it, starting with that all-important staple of the best pizza pie.

Mozzarella is the most popular choice of cheese in history. As with most cheeses, it has been widely considered that mozzarella was really created entirely by accident. Rumor tells the story that mozzarella was only created when cheese curds accidently fell off a table into hot water.

But getting to the point about mozzarella, it is a mild cheese that undergoes a curing process (similar to falling in a bucket of hot water). Though we know little about its history, we do know that the first mozzarellas were made not from cow’s milk, as most modern people would expect, but from the milk of water buffaloes.

In fact, true water buffalo mozzarella is considered one of the most marvellous choices to make when cheese matters, but it is not a product that is widely produced commercially; instead, most pizza and delivery outfits make do with the still excellent fresh cow’s mozzarella. Despite the scarcity of mozzarella from buffalo, there are still ways to get it and use real water buffalo mozzarella, including in parts of Italy and from specialty food providers. The question then remains; Who milks the buffalo?