American Mozzarella's Evolution

Note that all three of these "pizza pioneers" were Midwestern in origin, none in spots that had particularly big Italian communities, let alone a mess of mozzarella makers. I know that Mr. Illitch and Mr. Monaghan have done big things to create jobs and community and contributed very positively to many people's lives. And I give them a lot of credit for that. The key was to create a product that would register with the pocketbook, not so much the culinary soul.

Not surprisingly, the way mozzarella was made shifted from a fresh, short shelf life product to a long-lived, rather rubbery textured "cheese" that was made for quick shredding and consistent melting. It's really not even remotely like the "real thing". But it's most definitely what I knew when I grew up.

On a personal level I can still remember my shock twenty years ago at learning that the stuff I'd always been told was mozzarella, basically, wasn't. I'd already been cooking for a living when I went to Italy for the first time--somewhere in the mid-'80s, if I remember right--and saw these soft white balls of what they were calling mozzarella floating in milky liquid.

I really didn't know what to make of it. But it only took one trip to realize that the cheese I'd grown up with, the one we'd shred up to toss onto pizzas (or one of my childhood favorites, English Muffin pizzas), had little to do with what the Italians called "mozzarella."

Mozzarella in Italy is a cheese that you eat within a day or so of manufacture. When you cut it the cheese should ooze milky white liquid. Eat it drizzled with the best olive oil, then sprinkled with little more than sea salt, and freshly ground black pepper and laid next to roasted peppers or of course really good tomatoes from the market.

I used to go to Europe looking forward to eating exceptionally well for a week or however long I was going to be there. While I still love to go and always look forward to finding unique local specialties the truth is that I actually have access to amazingly good food every single day right here in Ann Arbor.

By the end of a week overseas, I'm almost always happy now to come home to (this time of year) local summer greens, great bread from the Bakehouse, olive oils, cheeses, olives, and (this time of year) local produce from the farmer's market. And soon, a plate of sliced fresh heirloom tomatoes and fresh mozzarella.

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