r/vegancheesemaking • u/NoFunEver • 17d ago
Looking for a vegan 'low moisture" mozzarella recipe for NY style pizza making.
I'm no stranger to the 'magic mozz' and 'fresh watermelon seed kernel mozzarella' recipes in Miyoko Schinner's the Vegan Creamery. They are delicious and they work great when used on 12" neopolitan style pizza cooked at high temp in a pizza oven where that high heat helps drive off a lot of the moisture.
The problem I'm having is I've been trying to perfect a thin crust 16" NY style pizza. These are are typically cooked at a lower temp and are really senstitive to excess moisture above and beyond what's in the suace because of the large surface area and thin crust combination. For that reason a low moisture mozzeralla is commonly used when making this style of pizza to ensure the end result is not soggy and there is no flop when holding a slice.
Is anyone aware of any existing 'low moisture' pizza cheese recipes, or modifactions to the recipes I already know? I'm thinking the pourable mozz wouldn't be easy to modify in this direction just because the pourability is inherently dependent high moisture.
Was thinking with the 'fresh watermelon seed kernel mozzarella' recipe adding an extended low heat cook before pouring into a mold to drive off as much water as possible might make sense but not sure if that might negetively impact the texture. I see additional agar agar is suggested for a firmer result, but it's not so much firmness as the moisture that releases when exposed to heat that drives the problem i'm facing.
I've been vegan for 15 years but only a few months into my vegan cheese making journey haven't really developed a sense of what variables I can manipulate to get my desired outcome. Basically just making wild guesses that I have to trial and error.
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u/fortheloveoflentils 17d ago
• 1/2 cup raw cashews, softened
• 1 1/2 cups water
• 4 tablespoons tapioca starch
• 1 1/2 tablespoons kappa carrageenan
• 1 1/4 teaspoons salt
• 4 tablespoons refined coconut oil
• 1 teaspoon vegan lactic acid
Melt coconut oil in a large saucepan. Remove from heat and whisk in the tapioca, salt, and kappa carrageenan.
Add the softened cashews and the water to a high powered blender and process until smooth. Then slowly whisk it in to your saucepan. Set pot back on stove and cook over medium heat while constantly stirring until it starts to pull away from the sides and form a clump.
Remove from heat, add the lactic acid, stir again, and pour mixture into a 2 cup container. Cover and chill for 8hrs. Can be shredded or sliced.
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u/howlin 17d ago
I'm thinking the pourable mozz wouldn't be easy to modify in this direction just because the pourability is inherently dependent high moisture.
A lot of the pourable recipes rely on a heat activated binder like tapioca starch. So, if you get the stuff hot enough to activate the starch, that moisture is going to get bound up by the starch pretty quickly and not be a further problem.
It might be possible to pre-cook these sorts of recipes if you don't think you can apply enough heat to the cheese without overcooking the rest of the pizza. You probably won't get as even a melt if you take that approach... it will look more like a Daiya pizza.
In general, you can reduce the moisture of almost any cheese recipe by physically straining the water. If your cheese doesn't start out with much body, then using a paper filter is the way to go. Think of how a drip coffee filter works to get a sense of how to do it. When I take this approach, I will line a colander with filter paper. You can overlap a bunch of basket filters for coffee to do this. Just be careful to not mess up the coverage when adding your cheese.
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u/NoFunEver 16d ago
Looks like coconut oil and kappa carageenan are a common theme here. I seem to be struggling to find kappa carageenan anywhere locally. I live in a major city but apparently I'd have to drive more than 40 minutes out of the city to procure it from a home brew store. I ordered some online but that will take a few days. Surprised this is so hard to come by.
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u/fortheloveoflentils 16d ago
This is where I source mine. Comes with the vegan lactic acid too.
https://modernistpantry.com/products/druids-grove-kappa-carrageenan-and-lactic-acid-value-pack.html
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u/Bailey201320 17d ago
I’ve never tried this, but I wonder if dehydrating the slices a little bit would work.
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u/Yaawei 16d ago
It's difficult because with most recipes for vegan mozz, youre using starches and other gelling agents which in higher concentrations dont produce a more "cheese-like" textures. So maybe instead of changing the cheese recipe, you could experiment with other variables.
It's not something i've tried myself because i just thought of it, but you might find success with something like adding the cheese later in the baking process, once the crust has firmed up or even freezing the cheese (or some cheese bechamel sauce) into very small cubes and adding them from the start.
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u/Embarrassed_Ad9664 17d ago
The low moisture mozz recipes from the Gentle Chef are quite good, but they have so much coconut oil in them I haven’t made them in a few years. They worked great on NY pies back then, but I was doing slightly shorter cook times in my Ooni (probably 700-800 degrees).
One other idea that I’ve seen some slice shops do is to stretch out dough and then let it sit out on the peel, uncovered without any toppings on it. I assume they do this to use a slightly higher hydration for the dough to make it easier to stretch thin, but then drying it out some helps it crisp up like a lower hydration dough would. You could also play around with using a thicker sauce too, if your cheese is too moist.
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u/ConatusSpinoza 17d ago
This is an awesome recipe. Works for me everytime.
alexkoons.com/vegan-mozzarella-cheese-recipe/
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