chickenparm,
I neglected to mention, but as indicated at Reply 1 at
http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,7088.msg60982.html#msg60982, member November took a stab at establishing the blend of mozzarella cheeses that he believes Papa John's gets from Leprino Foods. I had a difficult time replicating that blend where I am (because of general unavailability of processed whole milk mozzarella cheese) so I have used mostly low-moisture part-skim mozzarella cheese. But, one of the key points I took away from my analysis of the Papa John's pizzas is the use of diced cheese as opposed to shredded. That has pretty much become my standard form of the mozzarella cheeses I use on my pizzas. It provides great coverage on pizzas.
Leprino Foods is a heavy hitter in the mozzarella cheese business, but it is a very low key company that keeps itself below the radar such that few people even know that the company exists. But it is the world's largest mozzarella cheese producer. This has made Jimmy Leprino, the CEO of Leprino Foods a billionaire, as noted at
http://www.forbes.com/lists/2009/10/billionaires-2009-richest-people_James-Leprino_XMXS.html. Leprino Foods holds a large number of key patents on its cheese manufacturing processes, many of which pertain to ways of introducing various flavorings into the cheeses. If you look at the Domino's ingredients list for its pizza cheese, at
http://www.dominos.com/home/menu/ingredients.jsp, one of the ingredients in that list is "Flavors". Those "Flavors" can be just about anything. Without knowing what those flavors are, it would be hard to replicate the particular cheese blend that Domino's uses on its pizzas. The Papa John's cheese ingredients list does not specify "Flavors".
I am pretty sure that scott r is right about the effects of the use of anti-caking ingredients like cellulose powders in the cheeses that the chains use. Fortunately, in a home environment, we can avoid such ingredients.
Peter
