Pizza Cheese

The melty, flavorful charm of pizza cheese

Whoever first decided that dough and red sauce could become something amazing when combined with cheese is our idol. Sure, you could eat marinara splashed on flatbread without a perfectly melted and slightly browned mozzarella top layer, but why torture yourself?

Once you've discovered the joy of pizza with cheese, the next step is picking your favorite candidate for the very best pizza cheese. Mozzarella has had a lock on that spot for years, and it's not likely to lose its title anytime soon. But there are dozens of challengers who add flavor, pop, and sizzle to any flatbread or ‘za, and you owe it to your taste buds to take these cheeses for a spin every once in a while.

Here in Wisconsin, almost any cheese is pizza cheese. When you love pizza as much as we do, you want it to give it the very best this world has to offer, and that means layering, grating, dolloping, and sprinkling Wisconsin cheese on every oven-bound pizza pie.

Explore Wisconsin pizza cheese

When it comes to deciding what cheese you want to use on pizza, there's really only one rule: if it won't burn and it makes the pizza taste better, go for it.

After mozzarella cheese, the most popular types of pizza cheese are provolone, cheddar, and parmesan. But there's a whole ‘nuther world of pizza cheese out there to be explored. Consider some of these recipes:

• Chicken and Sun-dried Tomato Grilled Pizza, made with ricotta cheese and a little mozzarella.
• Southwest Chicken Pizza, with colby jack and pepper jack cheese.
• Alpine-Style and Prosciutto Flatbreads, made with a mountain cheese like Emmentaler, or fontina.
• Detroit Style Pizza, with Genoa salami and brick cheese.
• Spinach and Havarti Pizza, with fresh spinach and grated havarti plus parmesan for flavor zing.
• Tomato Pizza with Garlic and Smoked Gouda, with sliced plum tomatoes, fresh basil leaves, and lots of shredded smoked gouda.
• Asparagus and Butterkäse Cheese Pizza, made with blanched asparagus spears, shredded parmesan in thin slices of butterkäse cheese.
• Fresh Tomato-Feta Pizza, with basil leaves, kalamata olives, plum tomatoes, and feta cheese.
• Octoberfest Kielbasa and Potato Pizza, with slices of kielbasa, mashed potatoes, sauerkraut, and muenster cheese.
• Caramelized Onion and Gorgonzola Pizza, using a cauliflower crust topped with gorgonzola, onions, and fresh thyme.
• Wisconsin Limburger Vegetable Pizza, with sliced new potatoes, red onion, asparagus, and shredded limburger cheese.
• Simple Cheese Pizza, with red sauce and grated romano cheese.

Why your pizza craves Wisconsin cheese

From the time it's just a little ball of dough waiting to be tossed, every pizza dreams of being topped with Wisconsin cheese. That's because, like the rest of us, pizza wants the finest things in life, and there is nothing finer than cheese made in Wisconsin.

That's not an opinion – that's based on facts. Like the fact that we've won 5,552 cheesemaking awards – more than other state or country. Or the fact that we have the only Master Cheesemaker program on the planet outside of the one in Switzerland. And when you add the fact that we produce more flavors, styles and varieties of cheese than anywhere else the world, it's pretty clear why all those little pizza pies have Wisconsin-shaped stars in their eyes.