Scientists have confirmed that mozzarella is the perfect cheese selection to top a pizza since its stretchiness and other qualities allow it to bubble and brown the best.
New Zealand researchers used mozzarella, cheddar, Edam and Gruyere cheeses and measured their melting, bubbling and browning through software, TIME reported. The resulting study titled "Qualification of Pizza Baking Properties of Difference Cheese and Their Correlation with Cheese Functionality" has been published in the August issue of the Journal of Food Science.
"Pizza branding and blistering seems like a totally trivial question, right? You stuff your pizza in the oven and it clearly is going to brown and blister," said researcher Bryony James, an associate professor at the University of Auckland, as quoted by the New Zealand Herald.
"But it actually is dictated by a combination of composition and mechanical properties of the cheese itself," she said.
Mozzarella's stretchy consistency makes for big bubbles when water is evaporating from the pizza, and it browns more easily in the oven thanks to its lower oil and moisture levels.
"Different cheeses can be employed on 'gourmet' style pizzas in combination with mozzarella," the research team wrote in the study abstract. "Based on the findings, cheeses with some attributes can be used to cook pizzas to meet the specific preferences of consumers."
The researchers, who examined the results with image analyses, experimented with a range of cheeses that included types not typically used for pizza-making.
"We had mozzarella on there of course. We also went with cheeses that melt and flow but generally don't hang together as a sheet to create a blister--that was cheddar, edam and Colby," James described.
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