This Is the Very Best Kind of Cheese for Making Pizza at Home

Pizza without cheese is, well, no pizza at all, in my opinion. While I love less traditional options like goat cheese or feta, my husband is a purist, which means when we make pizza at home, mozzarella it is. What kind of mozzarella, though? The best might not actually be what you think.

While I love fresh mozzarella in my caprese salad and on pizzas at our favorite neighborhood spot, it’s actually not the best choice when making pizza at home. Instead, skip the fancy containers in the cheese section of your grocery store and head to the dairy case where the blocks of cheddar and tubs of sour cream are. Grab some plain ol’ mozzarella instead — in either block or pre-shredded form. This is the low-moisture stuff.

This type of mozzarella is aged to become a dense cheese with lower water content than the fresh stuff. This is better for homemade pizza because when it melts it doesn’t release any water, which fresh mozzarella can. While the incredibly hot temperature of your local pizzeria’s oven counters this by quickly evaporating the water, a regular home oven isn’t hot enough to do this, even if it’s cranked up to 500°F. And nobody likes puddles on their pizza.

Low-moisture mozzarella also has a tangier, saltier flavor due to the aging process. That means you’ll get perfectly melty cheese pulls that also have great flavor — a win-win! So next time you’re shopping for pizza night, save the splurge and buy the cheaper stuff — your pizza will actually be better for it.