Oily cheese woes

[jtwg]

I have been experimenting with some unusual pizza varieties, and part of this involves using some decidedly non-traditional cheeses. I'm finding that some cheeses, like cheddar and Swiss produce a lot of oil when melted. Does anyone know of a good way to mitigate this, short of dabbing the surface with paper towels?

[dmcavanagh]

I don't really understand what you expect people to tell you. You can't change what the cheese is, cheese contains fat, and it comes out of the cheese during cooking. You can limit to a degree the amount, by using larger cuts or pieces of cheese. Finely grated cheese, even mozzarella will "oil off" to a good degree while cooking. Some people will start with very cold, nearly frozen cheese to limit browning and oiling off. The tried and true method still seems to be soaking it up with a napkin.

[jtwg]

Your answer is pretty good, so I'd say that's what I was expecting.

 

I guess I was just wondering what strategies people employed. I was considering trying adding the cheese 1/2 way through cooking to see if that helped.

[chickenparm]

The oil makes it even better.
 

[dmcavanagh]

 I like to let the oil run down my arm!

[TXCraig1]

Heck, I add EXTRA (chili) oil to my cheese pies!

[Pete-zza]

jtwg,

In general, cheeses like cheddar cheese tend to have higher fat content than other cheeses, so they tend to oil off more than other cheeses. There may be some brands of cheddar cheese that do not oil off as much as other brands, but I have not found them at retail. But, to answer your question more directly, yes, it is possible to add the cheddar cheese later during the bake, for the very purpose of reducing the oiling off of that cheese. That is what I did with the pizza shown and described at Reply 307 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,9068.msg99472.html#msg99472. In my case, the cheddar cheese was part of a blend with mozzarella cheese. I would have preferred to use only cheddar cheese but the brand I was using was either sharp or extra sharp and I used the mozzarella cheese to soften the flavor of the cheddar cheese.

Peter

[jtwg]

Thanks for the reply, Peter. That looks pretty good. I'll definitely try that next time.

[Jackie Tran]

Craig, your cheese pie looks incredibly crispy which is how I like it.  Any chance it was as crispy as it looks?  Looks phenomenal.