Whoever first decided that dough and red sauce could become something amazing when combined with cheese is our idol. Sure, you could eat marinara splashed on flatbread without a perfectly melted and slightly browned mozzarella top layer, but why torture yourself?
Once you've discovered the joy of pizza with cheese, the next step is picking your favorite candidate for the very best pizza cheese. Mozzarella has had a lock on that spot for years, and it's not likely to lose its title anytime soon. But there are dozens of challengers who add flavor, pop, and sizzle to any flatbread or ‘za, and you owe it to your taste buds to take these cheeses for a spin every once in a while.
Here in Wisconsin, almost any cheese is pizza cheese. When you love pizza as much as we do, you want it to give it the very best this world has to offer, and that means layering, grating, dolloping, and sprinkling Wisconsin cheese on every oven-bound pizza pie.
When it comes to deciding what cheese you want to use on pizza, there's really only one rule: if it won't burn and it makes the pizza taste better, go for it.
After mozzarella cheese, the most popular types of pizza cheese are provolone, cheddar, and parmesan. But there's a whole ‘nuther world of pizza cheese out there to be explored. Consider some of these recipes:
Mozzarella is the most famous and most used pizza cheese, but any cheese that melts well can be considered a pizza cheese, providing the melted layer of cheesy goodness that gives pizza its texture and tangy taste.
You can add almost any kind of cheese to pizza. In addition to cheeses that melt, you can grate or crumble big, bold cheeses like romano, limburger or gorgonzola on a pizza to add flavor or add dollops of softer cheeses like burrata or quark for a creamy texture.
Generally, no. The most common pizza cheeses are mozzarella, which melts, and parmesan which doesn't – it's added for flavor.
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From the time it's just a little ball of dough waiting to be tossed, every pizza dreams of being topped with Wisconsin cheese. That's because, like the rest of us, pizza wants the finest things in life, and there is nothing finer than cheese made in Wisconsin.
That's not an opinion – that's based on facts. Like the fact that we've won 5,552 cheesemaking awards – more than other state or country. Or the fact that we have the only Master Cheesemaker program on the planet outside of the one in Switzerland. And when you add the fact that we produce more flavors, styles and varieties of cheese than anywhere else the world, it's pretty clear why all those little pizza pies have Wisconsin-shaped stars in their eyes.
Craving award-winning aged cheddar, pining for parmesan, or searching for a new cheese to try? The world’s best cheese is just a click away! Explore our directory of Wisconsin cheesemakers and retailers who offer online cheese shopping and get cheese shipped right to your door. What are you waiting for?
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