If you didn't have the anti-caking agent, the cheese would just cake up into one solid mass, making the whole "pre-shredded" part literally meaningless...

If you want shredded cheese without anti-caking agents, just shred your own - it's cheaper, and only requires a grater and a bit of extra time over pre-shredded.

[–] princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone 25 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

It literally doesn’t. Like yeah, it sticks together into clumps, but you can easily break them back up into shreds with your hands. Source: I’ve worked a bunch of pizza jobs, both on the high and low end. Guess what, it literally is not cheaper to pay the labour for someone on staff to shred it, at least here in Australia where we pay real bloody wages.

Also, to the OP, “pizza mix” cheese usually is your best bet. They’ll sometimes label it as “meltable mix”.

[–] gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Ive worked pizza jobs and I can't think of why you WOULDNT slice the cheese in-house, it takes less than five minutes to do!

At least at our place it was the same machine that stirred the dough. Cut a block into 1/8 slices (a 2 min job max) and then feed each chunk into the chute and let gravity do it's thing

Fresh sliced cheese for pizzas in five minutes or less, and it adds like 2 dishes to the pile

To add further to what makes "pizza mix" or "meltable mix" better is that it uses LOW MOISTURE mozzarella cheese. Regular mozz is super wet and doesn't melt the way you expect pizza cheese to

I make my own mix at home using 1/4 lb blocks of low moisture full fat (can get at Walmart shockingly often) and 1/6 lb of a sharp cheddar

[–] TheHowTM@lemmings.world 4 points 10 months ago

Home pizza hobbiest here. I use low-moisture part-skim pre-shredded mozz, but put it on the pie frozen. As long as there's not too much grease from the toppings I rarely get problems with the cheese splitting.

[–] princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

The places I worked had floor mixers, running on 3-phase, that could do 50kg of dough at a time. They have mesh guards that lower into place, without which they won’t run. Because they will pull your entire arm in and break each bone in a dozen places before you can even blink. I have never, ever seen one with an external powered attachment drive like a kitchenaid, or at least never seen it used. A shredder that powerful would almost certainly be illegal under our workplace safety laws (Australia), it would probably rip someone’s face off if their hair got caught.

Besides that, it is still labour cost and time to do. When that person could instead be doing something better. The highest end pizza place I worked at would cook everything in wood-fired ovens. Pre-shred was used on the cheaper pizzas. It was used as a base on pizzas that had things like pulled pork and shredded lamb too. We had real, buffalo mozzarella on some, as well as bocconcini & fresh, local goat’s cheese. We’d also go through 4-5 full hotel pans of it on a Friday and Saturday night. Would make our own pasta in house every day too. There Was Not The Time. Yet it never stopped us packing a 120 top three times over with dozens of orders for takeout per hour every weekend. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Also, I’ve never seen anything other than low moisture mozzarella sold shredded. Maybe that’s just me.

[–] silentknyght@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

But almost no one would buy it if it looked all clumped up like that in the package in the store.

[–] princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I don’t know, I live in Australia, maybe Americans are just that whingey about it? But outside of the cheapest supermarket home brands, most shredded cheese here hasn’t got caking agents. As far as I can tell, people buy it just bloody fine mate. Imagine being this stuck up about shitty, horrible cheese.

[–] silentknyght@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

Yeah, I'm not defending any cheese choice; everyone can do themselves. I was just remarking that food appearance heavily influences sales, and everyone is susceptible to that bias.

[–] Jackie_meaiii@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 10 months ago

Ty Norah for the pizza mix/meltable mix tip :3