Cheese

My family enjoys cheeses of all kinds, especially melted cheese. We usually make home made pizza once a week. Several years ago, I started purchasing the pre-shredded cheese because finding block Mozzarella was difficult. As our family grew, the amount of cheese stretched to 3 large packages for pizza night.

A few weeks ago, I got a great deal on chunks of Mozzarella cheese. The kids had fun shredding it and the pizza tasted wonderful. While gathering up the empty wrapper, I realized that we had used 30% less cheese on our pizza. The pizza had tons of cheese, possibly even more than normal. I had always know that corn starch is added to shredded cheese to keep it separated in the packaging. The amount of starch came as a surprise. Those "cheaper" bags of pre-shredded cheese end up costing me 25% more every time we eat pizza. Wow!

Yesterday, we had pizza for supper. I ran out of chunk cheese and had Madelyn walk to the store and pick up a small package of shredded cheese for the second pizza. I ate one slice of pizza from the first pizza. YUM! Gooey cheese. Slightly tangy flavor. What could be better?

Then, I had a slice from the second pizza. The flavor was not anywhere near as good as the first slice. Even keeping in mind that a lot of my taste satisfaction was met with the first slice, the second pizza was not as good. We will no longer be purchasing pre-shredded cheese around here. The easy-to-use product convenience isn't enough to offset the loss of flavor and added expense. Try this yourself, I'd love to hear if you had a similar experience.