The Secret to Homemade Mozzarella with Joe Gatto

Get ready for a mouthwatering journey into the world of homemade mozzarella with pizza aficionados Andris and Chef Joe G. In this captivating session, you'll witness the magic of transforming simple curds into stretchy, glossy mozzarella that'll turn your homemade pizzas into restaurant-quality.

Chef Joe, known for his "From Scratch" shows and cookbook, guides you through the process step-by-step. You'll learn about the importance of using salted water, the right temperature, and the satisfying stretching technique that gives mozzarella its signature texture. But this isn't just about cheese-making – it's a masterclass in taking your pizza game to the next level.

As you watch, you'll discover:

• The secret to 72-hour dough that makes all the difference
• Why homemade mozzarella outshines store-bought every time
• Creative ways to use your freshly made cheese beyond pizza
• Insider tips on achieving that perfect leopard-spotted crust

Joe's enthusiasm is contagious, and you'll find yourself itching to get in the kitchen and try these techniques yourself. From mozzarella balls to basil-infused creations, the possibilities are endless.

Read along the video to make sure you don't miss a thing:

Andris: Hey everybody, it's Andris here with special guest Joe. Today we're making fresh mozzarella. However, this comes with a little side story. We recorded this last week, but yours truly messed it up and, for lack of better words, the recording was a bomb. So we're redoing this for you. Joe is so kind enough to make even more mozzarella. I hope this means more pizza for you this weekend and your kids. I'm gonna leave this to Joe. I'm gonna keep my quiet. We're going to record Joe making fresh mozzarella. We're going to answer some questions. Guys, this is a real treat. Can't wait for you to see it. And welcome, Joe.

Joe: Thank you for having me again, Andris. And just to let everyone know, Andris called me after we did it and he told me that my performance lacked verve. So he was like an old Hollywood mogul and told me I had to come in and do it again. So here we are doing it again because I don't want to be punished. But thank you for letting me be a part of this pizza world. I love it.

Today we're gonna make fresh mozzarella. If you don't know me, I'm Chef Joe G. I have a TV show on Pluto called "From Scratch." I have a show on NPR called "From Scratch." I have a national book called "Seriously From Scratch" because, shockingly, I make everything from scratch. So I hand-forge my own knives, I pull water out of the Atlantic, make salt, I break down whole animals, I milk cows, make butter and cheese. I know it sounds insane, but that's literally kind of my niche in life. And I used to be a private chef for Celtics and Red Sox players.

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So today, we're going to make fresh mozzarella from curd again. But this is one of the most fun processes you can do. It's super easy. You can get curd from local dairy farms. There's a... you can get it online, very easy to find. You can make the curd yourself. I wouldn't say do that first time out. I would get curd so you can really understand the process a little more.

Joe: And what this is, is we have fresh mozzarella curd. So the cows get milked - I did this on my show, you can actually see this on Pluto TV - you milk the cows, goes to the cheese house, they add rennet, which is a naturally reoccurring enzyme which separates the curds from the whey, and then it gets pressed and you get these curds. Now we want to make mozzarella out of these curds. These are mozzarella curds, but we want to make the cheese that we're going to use for pizza to take our pizza to the next level.

So right here, the thing we have to do is we break it up a little bit, and then I have a big thing of heavily salted water. This has to be like seawater. The stories I used to hear all the time and have read is that they used to pull barrels out of the Mediterranean, and then they would use this heated up and make the mozzarella. So you get that real saltiness and it washes over the curds. Some people add salt here. I like doing it in the water because I feel it really covers the curds better and you get a better cheese.

So what we're going to do, it's going to eventually look like we're melting the curds, but we're actually cooking them. So I'm going to take the salted water and I'm going to go right over this. Now the first addition is going to, of course, raise the temp of the curd because the curd's been in the fridge and it's cold and this is boiling hot water. It has to be super hot. And I'm going to put that in and then I'm going to start chopping the curds up and you'll see, I'll show you in a second.

Okay, so I have the curd in here and you can see it's starting to get glossy and it's starting to look like it's melting, but it's actually cooking. Now at this point, I've raised the temp of the curd so I can start crushing it, but then I'm going to have to empty this whey out and I'm going to have to add in another addition of hot water. And why, you ask, is because the cold curd has cooled the water so it's not going to get the reaction that we want for the cheese. So we need some more hot water.

Joe: So right here, when you can get your hands in there without crying, you know that it's... you need more hot water. So I'm going to empty this out and then you'll see me put in a new addition. Is that good, Andris?

Andris: That's perfect, yep.

Joe: Great. Okay, so now comes the next addition of hot water and this is where the game really starts to change. So you'll see now it's starting to get stringy and this is where we're starting to develop flavor and texture and the salt is going through all the curd. And you can see for a sec where now... see how it's starting to pull just a little but we still have these chunks and when I pull it too far it tears. So we have to build up the structure and we do that by pulling, but first we want to get it to the point of where it's starting to get glossy and it's making one big piece, which this is almost there.

And you can see now it's... you can see how pliable that is, right? What I do for you, Andris, what I do for you. So right now it's starting to be able to be pulled. I'm going to try to gather all this up and start making one piece so I can start pulling it. And you can see right here where it's starting to break. That means I know that it's not ready, so I have to keep pulling it to break those and start developing it. And I do that by putting it back in the hot water, letting it heat up again, and then pulling it right when it comes out just like that.

You can see it starts to really get a gloss to it. This is pretty cool. This is super fun to do with your kids. We do it a lot. It really will take your pizza to the next level. So I'm going to add a little more hot water and let that sit for, I don't know, like 10 seconds, and then I can pull it really wide.

All right, so now we have this. We can edit that out, right? Uh, now we have this and I'm gonna pull and we really want to start... and it breaking is good. You want that because that's going to develop the strength which will give it the texture. And then I'm going to do it one more time and then I'm going to put it back in. I'll do one more addition of hot water to get it really hot. Drops my spoon. And then once it's here, this is pretty much going to be it.

Joe: And once we get it here, there's things you can do with it like we can make... I'll show you how to make the little mozzarella balls, big ones. One of the things I like to do is I'll take this and since it's so pliable, I can roll it thin. So I roll it super thin, layer it with basil, prosciutto, and a little bit of reduced balsamic, and then roll it back up and slice it into like rollatini. Always a huge hit, super delicious. And if you haven't had warm mozzarella straight out of the pot, you just have to make it. It's unbelievable.

So here we go. Now you can see right... Wow. Yep, this is where we want to be. So if I can get it wingspan, I'm doing pretty good. Oh, I'm 16 by 9 today so I can go really far. See that? It's good like jump rope, right?

So this is exactly where we want to be. Now if I want to take it, put back in the hot water and then I can start making little mozzarella balls. Once it heats up a little more and we've developed all the strength we need, we've infused it with flavor from all the salt in there, and the uses are endless. Right from pizzas, which is what we really want to do here, to lasagnas, anything.

I use it... I put it on the smoker at the end of a smoke in a bowl and I get some smoked mozzarella. Uh, sometimes right now I would chop up some basil and I'd pull it into the cheese and I get basil, like basil-infused mozzarella that I use on meatball subs, which is awesome. And you know, most of the time this is going to end up in the fridge and I'm going to slice it and my girls will come home from camp and they'll eat it all. So that's a really good use for it.

But pizzas, if you're going to make pizza, right? We're always... Andris and I have been doing this a long time. Pizza's just obsessed with it, right? If you're going to take the time and do the 72-hour dough, make your sauce, everything, make the cheese, take it to that final next level. Because that's what we're looking for, right? All that leoparding on the bottom, that crisp and that chew from the big bubbles, that nice acidic sauce and that creamy mozzarella. So we get the perfect bite.

Joe: This is way better than anything you can get at the store. When you're making it here and you put it on your pizza, you're going to see what I'm talking about. Just like if you get dough from a store, right? It's not even close to what you're making at home. It's the same thing here.

So now to making mozzarella balls, which I could store in cooled whey or I could store in oil with garlic to infuse it. So I'm going to squeeze it like this and then you twist and we get little tiny mozzarella balls that we just... we just tuck under just like that. And we get these awesome little mozzarella balls, right? And we can do big versions of that.

I heavily suggest the rollatini. That's really good. And when you make your pizza, I just do this. So I make just a little log like this and then I cool it in just plain water and then I slice it for the pizza. And just make sure you dab it on paper towels because it does retain a lot of whey and that will pull a bit on your pizza if you don't dab it. So you just put it on some paper towels then put it in and this will make the absolute best pizza that you've ever had.

This is next level. We use it in calzones. I mean, we use it for everything you do. I do a little bruschetta with fresh mozzarella with grilled bread and just charred tomatoes and the mozzarella, little fresh basil, garlic... forget about it. Eat like 50 of them.

So, uh, yeah, that's mozzarella guys, right from this tip to tail here. And um, yeah, reach out to me if you have any questions. I know everything's in the link. At Chef Joe on Instagram. And Andris, thanks so much for having me, my man. If you have any questions, let me know.

Andris: Yeah. Hey, Joe, incredible. Like again, I think this was better than the last one, having those close-ups and the people are going to... and I can't recommend this enough, guys. Make you... you know, we've done this together, Joe, a bunch of times, demos before. Really, it just... you know, we're making the 72-hour dough, we've got our steel in the ovens, we're creating better than restaurant quality pizzas in our own ovens, which is mind-blowing. And taking... making your... I don't even know of many restaurants that one, make their own dough, but two, now make their own mozzarella, right?

Joe: We should open a place up, right? It would just... it would literally crush. You guys will have the best pizza on the planet in your home oven by just using these simple techniques and just taking the extra time to do.

Andris: And uh, people are gonna love this, Joe. And you... you mentioned where we can find you. Are you on Instagram and all the social channels?

Joe: Yep, at Chef Joe. And then I have my new show "From Scratch" where I do stuff like this all the time. From making my own bacon, pastrami, making butter, making pickles, all the bread. So each show's wrapped around one ingredient. So we did a grilled cheese show, we're making bread, we're making butter. We did a BLT, we did a ramen where I'm making the broth and making the noodles and making the Sriracha. So all fun things that pizza heads like your guys and girls love.

And I mean, I can't stress enough how good these pizzas come out. We do demos in Boston for, you know, hundred... we just did one last week for 150 people on a roof deck in Boston for one of the big residential hotels. And to a person, everyone said it was the best pizza they ever had. 72-hour dough, using the steels, really simple, right? Not cooking the sauce at all, just a little salt, pepper, and Italian herbs on mine, and then the fresh pulled mozzarella.

And the one pizza that was off the hook is we did fresh pulled mozzarella, then we did pepperoni, and I just done a show on making homemade pastrami so I had a pound of pastrami at the house, and we did pastrami pizzas. And I don't even know what to say. It was... I mean, I'm still kind of shaking from how good they were.

But make the... make the cheese. Super easy to find curd. And definitely check out my shows. If you're into food, you'll absolutely love them. We... we dig deep, we have a ton of fun, they're nice short fun exciting. You see my kids pop up. If you have kids, we're doing a brownie one, ice cream and salted caramel coming up. So tune in and again, make pizza, make pizza, make pizza. 

And use the Baking Steel because I can testify that it's easily the best thing to make pizza on, hands down. Nothing's even come close. It's just the best product to make pizza by far.

Andris: Thank you, Joe. You guys are amazing. We'll send this email out to everybody. If you're watching this on YouTube, be sure to subscribe. Have any questions, leave it in the comments. We'll get back to you. Thank you, Joe.

Joe: Thank you guys. Thanks, Andris.

Andris: Thanks, buddy.

Ready to make a perfectly crisp pizza with amazing mozzarella? Get your Baking Steel today and start baking better pizzas.