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Havent ventured into making mozzarella yet because I know it's a tough cheese to make... 
One question - silly really - is do people use dishwasher gloves to protect their hands from the heat when stretching curds?  or is it tolerable? 
I know everyone is different and really - i should just try a make and see how it goes...

Trent

I got a couple of heavy ones and I use them. Some people report just piling over a few thin ones to achieve the same protection. I could see not needing them at all by just letting the mozzarella stretch with a wooden spoon or any other utensil, then the heat from the last "just shaping it" wouldn't be an issue. Take into account people use different temps for mozzarella stretching and also have different heat tolerances so YMMV (e.g., I  have a friend who is a cook in an Indian place and would regularly dip the points of his fingers in hot oil to turn over stuff he's frying).

I don't think Mozzarella is tough to make if you follow a normal recipe and have a pH meter... the weird part is the stretching and there's many videos of that so you can see different ways of doing it (and if you don't have the pH meter just get some videos on how to test by stretching).

I honestly think Mozzarella's main issue is people spreading "quick 30 mins" videos and recipes. They're like those videos where someone throws three water bottles and they end up on top of each other... yay it was quick and cool but you should stack them manually if you want a tower, instead of trying to replicate that "1-time-wonder"

I use dish gloves when I make traditional mozz, as the whey is about 145.

I suck at mozzarella, but what I've been doing lately is doing the initial melting of the curds with a large bamboo paddle.  Then when it's flowing nicely to use my gloved hands to shape it.  I *think* I could probably tolerate the temp of the cheese when shaping it as I don't actually put my hands in the hot water.  But I use gloves :-) I would definitely use gloves until you decided that you didn't need them.

Thanks all!

Trent

I have dry skin so it's sensitive to the heat (can't even tolerate hot showers).  I use very thick dish gloves, plus keep a bowl of ice beside the cheese for dipping my hands in.  Hands still turn red, but it's tolerable.