Three things decide the cheese on a pizza: how long it bakes, what style it is, and how much cheese goes on. Bake time matters most, because it decides how much water the cheese can carry. A pizza that bakes for 90 seconds can take a wet, fresh mozzarella. One that bakes for 25 minutes in a pan needs a drier cheese. The full comparison of the two mozzarellas is in low-moisture vs. fresh mozzarella. This page covers the rest of the choice.
Cheese by style
Fresh mozzarella: Neapolitan-style
Fresh mozzarella comes in two kinds: fior di latte, made from cow’s milk, and mozzarella di bufala, made from water buffalo milk. Ken Forkish describes bufala as richer and more acidic than fior di latte, and wetter, so it can make a watery pizza. Fior di latte has a lighter, milkier flavor, costs less and is easier to find, and Forkish notes that many people prefer it on pizza.
The amount is modest. The EU specification for Pizza Napoletana calls for 80 to 100 g of mozzarella on each pizza, which sits inside the 73 to 109 g the Pizza Calculator suggests for a 12-inch Neapolitan-style pizza.
The catch is water. Fresh mozzarella is usually about 60% water, and in a home oven’s 6 to 10 minute bake it liquefies. Forkish’s fix is to add it about 4 minutes into the bake. Drain it first, too: slice it, let it sit on a rack in the fridge for a few hours, and pat it dry. For Mozzarella di Bufala Campana DOP, Forkish either adds it several minutes into the bake or lays it on right after the pizza comes out. Which brands to buy, and how to compare them, is in fresh mozzarella brands for pizza.
Low-moisture mozzarella: New York, pan and bar pizzas
Low-moisture mozzarella is the firm block in airtight plastic. Forkish calls it “the definitive cheese for American-style pizzas”: it melts into an even, stretchy layer, browns more than fresh mozzarella, and stays soft long after the pizza leaves the oven. It’s the cheese for New York-style pizza.
Buy whole milk. US standards set whole-milk mozzarella at 45% or more milkfat in its solids, and part-skim at 30 to 45%. Forkish says the whole-milk cheese “melts and tastes much better.” In America’s Test Kitchen’s tasting of block mozzarella, the favorites were Polly-O Whole Milk and Galbani Whole Milk.
Choose a whiter cheese if yours browns too fast. Forkish found that some brands brown much faster than others, and that a yellower block is usually older and saltier.
Grate it from a block. Bagged shreds carry an anticaking agent, usually potato starch and powdered cellulose, and many bags are part-skim. America’s Test Kitchen found that the anticaking agents made raw shreds gritty, but that on a pizza the bagged and block versions of the same brand melted much the same. Grating your own lets you choose whole milk, and Forkish points out that the bagged cheese costs more.
Hard cheeses underneath
Grated pecorino Romano, Parmigiano-Reggiano or Grana Padano adds salt and savory depth that mozzarella alone doesn’t have. Many of Forkish’s 12-inch pizzas use 10 to 15 g of it, sprinkled under the mozzarella. The order matters: under the mozzarella, the dry cheese is protected from scorching.
Watch the salt. Hard cheeses are typically aged 12 to 24 months and are saltier than mozzarella, and Forkish warns that generous pecorino under an aged low-moisture mozzarella, such as Grande, can make a very salty pizza.
Brick cheese: Detroit
Many Detroit-style pizzas are made with Wisconsin brick cheese. Modernist Pizza describes it applied liberally, so it caramelizes along the edges of the steel pan and forms a crown of crisp cheese, or frico.
Brick is drier and richer than mozzarella. Under the US standards it has at most 44% water and at least 50% milkfat in its solids, against 45 to 52% water and at least 45% milkfat in the solids for whole-milk low-moisture mozzarella.
King Arthur Baking’s weeknight Detroit pizza uses 340 g of shredded brick in a 9 × 13-inch pan. It puts a thick band of cheese where the dough meets the pan, then the sauce in stripes on top. If you can’t find brick, King Arthur suggests 170 g of low-moisture mozzarella, with 170 g of cheddar if you like.
Regional cheeses
New Haven. Modernist Pizza reports that if you order a “plain” in New Haven, it comes without mozzarella: grated pecorino Romano is the cheese, and the pizza is closer to a marinara with a sprinkle of cheese. See New Haven apizza at home.
St. Louis. Provel is a processed cheese based on white cheddar, Swiss and provolone, made in St. Louis. Modernist Pizza notes that it came to St. Louis-style pizza relatively late: at some point Luigi’s Restaurant replaced the style’s provolone with Provel, and the style is now known for it.
Burrata and ricotta
Burrata goes on after the bake. Forkish tops pizzas with it right after they come out of the oven, at room temperature, so the heat of the pizza only softens it. Burrata vs. stracciatella covers both, with amounts and storage.
Ricotta works both ways. Forkish bakes coin-sized dollops of ricotta mixed with pecorino, egg yolk and lemon zest on a zucchini-blossom pizza. Tony Gemignani’s cast-iron skillet pizza in The Pizza Bible goes the other way: whole-milk ricotta, or his ricotta cream, is piped onto each slice in small dollops after the pizza is baked and cut.
How much to buy
When the cheese goes wrong, it usually tells you why. Orange pools of fat mean it had too much heat for too long. A wet, soupy middle usually means the cheese was too wet for the length of the bake. Cheese that burns before the crust is done is covered in cheese burning before the crust cooks.
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Sources
- Ken Forkish, The Elements of Pizza (2016), chapter 4 (mozzarella, hard cheeses and salt) and chapter 7 (recipe quantities, the burrata and ricotta recipes, and Adam Kuban’s bar pizza).
- Nathan Myhrvold and Francisco Migoya, Modernist Pizza (2021), volume 1, page 105 (Provel and St. Louis), page 229 (New Haven’s “plain”) and page 250 (brick cheese on Detroit pizza).
- Tony Gemignani, The Pizza Bible (2014), cast-iron skillet pizza, as reprinted with the publisher’s permission on Cut Out + Keep (checked October 14, 2026): ricotta piped on after baking and cutting.
- European Commission, Regulation (EU) No 97/2010, annex: the Pizza Napoletana specification (mozzarella per pizza).
- US Code of Federal Regulations, 21 CFR 133.108, 133.155, 133.156 and 133.158: standards of identity for brick cheese and mozzarella.
- King Arthur Baking, Weeknight Detroit pizza: brick cheese amount, placement and substitutes.
- America’s Test Kitchen, “All About Mozzarella” (2024) and its shredded mozzarella tasting.
- Starting amounts are the site’s Pizza Calculator values for each style.