Pizza Cheese Project

[Sacwoodpusher]

I am sacwoodpusher and we at pizzamaking.com have an issue that we believe this forum can help with. First, some background:

Neapolitan pizzas are baked at temperatures of at least 750 degrees in wood fired ovens. This makes an excellent pizza but creates some challenges. One of the challenges is that low moisture cheese tends to "leopardize" or develop charred spot on it. This is solved by using the fresh mozzarella, but when we pizza people make this, we find that the homemade cheese leopardizes even though it may have the same moisture content as the purchased cheese.

I theorized that the reason for this may be that fresh purchased mozz is made using thermophilic starter, which converts milk sugars to lactic acid, but that the cheese made by our pizza makers is the 30 minute mozz using citric acid, and that cheese has higher sugars causing burning in wood fired ovens.

Does anyone know the relative content of sugar in fresh mozz using both methods?

[linuxboy]

Which sugar? Lactose, galactose? Another one?

Your leopardization problem is most likely caused by residual sugars undergoing a maillard reaction, just as you said. In direct-acidified mozz, the lactose is left, leading to nucleation sites that during high heat cause sugar-protein interaction to cause leoparding.

You can solve this issue by making a cultured mozz, choosing strains of S thermopilus that are galactose negative and including L helveticus in the mix to metabolize the remaining galactose. Also, in the make, aim for a rennet pH of 6.3 and a drain pH of 5.9-6.0 to reduce total sugars.

Another approach is to wash the curds with water to reduce sugars.

If you want a commercial product, Grande mozarella remains the gold standard. Polly-o also comes in at a close tie.