In tomato sauce / paste the difference between really good and bad products is unbelievable. You might be able to find really good, yet reasonably priced sauce, though. Especially sauce from good, homegrown tomatoes is so much better, you won´t care about the other toppings (cheese, sausage, etc.) very much once you have seen the light.
I haven't tried Bianco di Napoli.
I certainly like Mutti better than Cento.
Muir Glen is not bad for some applications. Also better than Cento.
A #10 can of 7-11 for $7 really blew me away, though.
I'm not sure my life can be regimented well enough to successfully grow anything but weeds. I do technically live in a desert.
I’d like to point out that expensive doesn’t guarantee good and sometimes cheap (less expensive) doesn’t necessarily mean poor quality. We can’t just line things up by price and be sure that translates to best quality. Personal taste and preference plays into it too, of course.
We are in Shop Talk. I’d be surprised if any of the successful shops insist on paying top dollar. A significant percentage will pay for high quality.
Yeah. In consumer psychology, paying a higher price almost always results in higher satisfaction with the product, even if it's the exact same product. The experiments have been done to death by college freshmen.
But when it's your livelihood on the line, you have to be analytical and figure out what actually pushes the right buttons.
My remark about my brother believing that Grande is a far too expensive mozzarella -- I'm not trying to make a living or really impress other people right now, but it's not hard at all to see how some work better than others. And I'm not even talking about how well they re-heat. Just how they melt and spread, the mouth-feel, etc. I don't even care that much if the cheese breaks and releases fat.
they aint all the same by a long shot. Even among whole milk low moisture with the right salt level, they just aren't apples to apples.
For example, costco's bella rosano has a good flavor, but if i pile it on a little heavy it's just gross. It's too soft and viscous in the mouth, as compared to the Galbani wmlm from RD. No idea if the small grocery store balls of Galbani wmlm at grocery stores is the same stuff.
Of course if your style and objective is a very light layer of cheese, that won't become a problem.
I recall hearing that Little Caesar's said that they use a lot of muenster in their blend because it's cheaper than the mozz they use. As a consumer, that sounds crazy to me, but I'm not ordering cheese by the ton.