Tesco Value Mozzarella

I have a breadmaker which I use pretty much daily. (I know an odd way to begin a review on mozzarella, but bear with me). One of the things I like to make in it is pizza dough, and obviously when making pizza at home, you need mozzarella (you see where I'm going now I hope ;) ).

I have tried quite a few different brands of mozzarella over the time I've been making my own pizzas, and I've found that they are pretty variable in price as well as in flavour and consistency. It's a strange thing because mozzarella is about the only cheese I know which you pretty much need to cook before you can tell if it's any good, and it has to be VERY good mozzarella for you to be able to enjoy it without cooking it.

This particular mozzarella is not VERY good cheese. Don't get me wrong, it's not actually bad, it's just not particularly good. Open the bag, pour off the liquid and then pause and give the cheese a bit of a squeeze and drain some more liquid off. Yep you've guessed it, it does seem to be a bit on the wet side.

The texture at first looks ok, but try to break it up, and it kind of comes apart in a way you wouldn't expect from mozzarella - almost crumbling in places. This is not a cheese which slices well, but then that's partly the nature of mozzarella to be honest. A very good sharp knife helps, or just give up and tear bits off to throw at the top of the pizza like I do.

After the pizza was cooked, I'll be honest, this mozzarella did taste better, but I found that pizza was quite wet in the middle and the only thing I can attribute this too is the mozzarella as everything else was the same as I've used on plenty of other occasions. Cut the pizza up, take a bite. Umm... well, the cheese doesn't form nice strings between your mouth and the slice as it ought to. The flavour isn't all that either, nothing bad, just a little on the bland side, and despite not stringing in the air, the cheese did seem rather too chewy as well.

I suppose for a budget mozzarella this is ok, but it's not going to win you awards or make friends demand your recipes. I'll buy it when I have to keep the price extra low, but I might mix a bit of better mozzarella in just to kind of help it along a bit if I can afford to you know.

Summary: Not great cheese by any stretch of imagination, not something I'd buy for flavour only for price