Pizza Cheese History - Types of Cheese for Pizza

Cheese is today used in not only as a standalone food, sweet treat and ingredients for many simple and complicated meals, but also as a crucial piece of many foods that are today considered as most popular foods in the world. One of such foods is without any doubt pizza, influential Italian oven-baked flat bread food that cannot be imagined today without the presence of cheese.

Since appearance of first pizzas more than 500 years ago, this food was always closely connected with cheese, even more so than ketchup (which was first introduced in the west only in the last 200 years of our history). Most popular examples of cheeses that are used as pizza toppings are Mozzarella, Provolone, Cheddar, Parmesan, Emmental, Romano, and Ricotta. The most popular of them all is easily Mozzarella, cheese that is today used on more than 30% of all Pizzas produced and eaten in United States of America, who is the world’s leader of pizza manufacturing (in 1997 USA produced more than 2 billion pounds of pizza cheese, while entire Europe produced only 200 million pounds).

Second most popular cheese is Provolone, while Cheddar, Parmesan and many others are usually used sporadically as topping ingredient to various pizza recipes. Average slice of pizza with cheese holds around 237 calories, 10g of fat, 26g of carbs and 10g of protein. Calorie breakdown is 38% fat, 44% carbs, 18% protein.

Another very influential type of pizza cheese is processed pizza cheese that is used as an ingredient in recipes for industrially made frozen pizzas. Often called analogue pizza cheese, these pasteurized cheeses are made to become moist and easy to chew as soon as user unfreezes and heats pizza he has bought from the market. They often have very soft and stringy texture, they are mild, and are almost always artificially flavored to hold the aroma and taste of famous cheeses such as Provolone, Swiss, Mozzarella and Cheddar. Cheeses that are put on top industrially made frozen pizzas are not gradually cooled, but freeze-frosted so that effect of cheese browning can be eliminated.

Today, the world’s largest manufacturer of pizza cheese is Leprino Foods Company that is headquartered in Denver Colorado and operates since 1950 as a family-owned business. They create more than 600,000 tonnes of pizza cheese per year.