When we think about mozzarella cheese, two extremes usually come to mind: the soft balls of fresh mozz we buy floating in whey; and the hard, salty, rubbery, pre-grated mozz we pile on pizza.
There is a middle ground, and it's a good place to visit.
Mozzarella is a filata cheese, or string cheese. The curds are formed with a combination of citric acid and rennet, broken up, heated to remove excess whey, drained, cooled, then heated again and stretched into a long, stringy mass. The citric acid in the preparation gives the rubbery texture needed to accomplish this step.
The amount of moisture left in the curds determines the firmness of the finished cheese. Low-moisture mozzarella, obviously, has had a lot of the whey removed from the curd. The level of salt added and the amount of time the cheese is left to age also affect how much moisture is left in the finished cheese — although some purists insist that even lightly aged mozzarella is no longer mozzarella, but should be called by another name, which varies according to location.
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