Cow vs. Water Buffalo Mozzarella (2011) | Hacker News Reader

Cow vs. Water Buffalo Mozzarella (2011)

itscheese.com

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Fun article, but the comments did it for me. Just a reminder of a different Internet.

It doesn't seem like WP, wonder if it's some kind of Joomla type deal

Now I want to know if the Lebanon cheese deal goes through.

I was reading Reddit comments from a decade ago.

It’s chilling how much changed in the last decade and then then from two decades ago.

It’s too nice, you can’t be mean anymore and it’s no longer to the point. Eternal summer forever. But pre 2010 comments really are before smartphones took over.

Mozarelle di Bufala di Buffalo bufalano Mozarelle di Bufala di Bufallo que Mozarella di Bufala di Buffalo bufalano

For the uninitiated:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffal...

Reading this, I thought some madman was milking a Cape water buffalo, which have been known to beat lions in 1-v-1 fights, and is only capable of one emotion: murder.

But turns out this milk is from the Asian water buffalo, which is even bigger than the African kind, but can be domesticated.

Not to rain on your buffalo vs lion parade, but the Cape buffalo is a sub-species of the African buffalo, not the water buffalo. There's no such thing as a Cape water buffalo.

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2014-10-23

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-brontosaurus-...

I stand corrected. I meant Cape buffalo, member of the Big Five, and certainly unmilkable

Now someone’s gonna go milk Cape buffalo to make deadly lion smashing death buffalo cheese to sell on Joe Rogan.

Kinda like that killer bee honey thing.

I saw an Asian water buffalo almost gore Scott Stokely in Cambodia. Fortunately it was on a short rope and when it’s farmer mama came out and slapped it, it calmed down. The thing was probably 3 tons!

Fun fact: in Thailand, a common derogatory term for westerners, or any kind of big, stupid creature, is water buffalo (ควาย khwai).

Malayalam speaker here, പോത്ത് (potthu) for big and/or clumsy people.

I was surprised to find that there is an Italian Mediterranean buffalo species/breed [1] that is thought to be descended from an altogether distinct lineage that went extinct around the last ice age [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Mediterranean_buffalo

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubalus_murrensis

"Italian" (and Egyptian) water buffaloes are not really bigger than regular cows. They are said to have come to the Middle East then to Italy through gifts from the Arabs or by Crusaders I believe.

I've always wondered, who was the first person to milk a cow, and then...drink it?

This reminds me of a Calvin and Hobbes comic: https://www.reddit.com/r/calvinandhobbes/comments/1gc8af/why...

I'm sure there was an element of relating to how humans do the same thing but we can make this thing always produce milk and we can't with humans

I make pizza at home in an outdoor pizza oven (gozney dome). My recipe cooks at about 850F. All forms (skim or otherwise) of cow mozzarella scorch fiercely at that temperature before the crust is done. Buffalo mozzarella does not. Some of my local markets carry Buf brand buffalo mozz, which is not from italy but is from the same animal (I think).

The buf mozz is the thing that takes my homemade pizza from "meh" to "actually, this is pretty good". I'm working on getting it to "wow, this is great" but that will require further refinement of my crust technique, I think.

Wow I didn't realise pizza ovens were so hot! A little web searching led me to this, for anyone else who's interested: https://www.crustkingdom.com/pizza-oven-temperature-guidelin...

By fortunate happenstance it's much the same as the annealing temperature of glass

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annealing_(glass)

which means you can throw in a pizza when you've finished at the kiln for a day and pull it out ready a minute or so later (depending on when you start the temp. step down cycle, current annealing oven temp. etc.)

There’s an infamous HN post of a guy who like broke his cleaning cycle on his oven to get it hot enough to do it “right”.

It depends on the style. The super-hot (~900°F) brick ovens are primarily used for Neapolitan-style pizzas (thin crust, light toppings), which cook in as little as a minute. A denser pizza like a Chicago-style deep dish couldn't be cooked in that sort of oven.

The way I do it is buffalo mozzarella goes well for fresh stuff: salads, sandwiches, popping some cheese in your mouth like a degenerate

Anything you’re going to cook at high temperatures, use cow mozzarella. Pizzas, casseroles, sauces etc.

(Also I’m amazed that buffalo mozzarella isn’t that known, I thought that’s what mozzarella was supposed to be).

I had a salad with buffalo mozzarella once and it was awful. Made me think the restaurant had an anti-vegetarian agenda (which probably is true, considering I'm in Belgium).

poolish Pizza dough I thought was the thing that brought my pizza from that's pretty good to one of the better pizzas I've eaten.

I'll give that a try, thanks! I'm currently doing a 10h room temp ferment (from 1/4t of yeast) and a 48h fridge rest. I think I got that from kenji alt. I'm satisfied with some of it, but I wish the crust was a bit more chewy and able to stand up to the sauce. The slices all flop over, but that may also be from over-saucing.

I cook in a Gozney as well and the things that have made the biggest difference for me are a slow-rise dough (I've found that the really high-hydration recipes didn't make a huge difference for me and made the dough way more difficult to handle, so I haven't been doing that) and putting the sauce on hot (I keep it at a low simmer on the stove and dress directly from there). Shaving some parm over the whole thing with a microplane and adding a quick drizzle of olive oil right before popping it in also makes a big difference (I crank the oven to around 900F and my pizzas usually cook in ~75 seconds).

Ken Forkish's _The Elements of Pizza_ is a great resource though it's more focused on standard home oven cooking. His slow-rise recipe is roughly: 350g water (at ~95F), 13g salt, 1.5g instant dry yeast, 500g white flour (I use Caputo 00), mix the first three and let the yeast hydrate, then mix in the flour, rest 20 minutes, knead briefly until smooth, two hour room-temp rise in an oiled tub, shape into balls, then fridge rise (until either the next day or the day after, but best the next day). I do it with 310g of water to get a 60% hydration dough which is my preference.

Site is marked as suspended if you get redirected to HTTPS. It has been archived:

https://web.archive.org/web/20250715171604/http://itscheese....

https://archive.is/3cJcu

How/why would you get redirected? The site itself doesn't appear to be redirecting to https correct?

Plugins or browser settings that prefer HTTPS. Eg Firefox HTTPS-Only mode.

Huh, never had a need for that. Most sites either they auto redirect to the https version, or they dont have one, eg in this case. Don't really see the need.

It doesn't matter if the site is trying to redirect you to an encrypted connection. An attacker in the middle could send any data in the unencrypted response. It's better to just skip it.

HTTPS-only mode doesn't do the initial HTTP request if HTTPS is available. This prevents downgrade attacks, prevents leaking private information such as the entire URLs (many email tracking links default to HTTP so you leak the token contained in there) or if the website supports it even the domain name you access. It's not "needed", sometimes it breaks things (HTTP-only website but with HTTPS port opened), sometimes it fixes things (HTTPS-only website with HTTP-port opened).

Not only are the protein ratios different in the Buffalo milk, but the fat content is radically different (buffalo 7-9% cow 3-4% jersey 5%). It's hard to even call anything but Jersey Mozzarella the same cheese.

And of course the much harder american "mozzarella" stuff thrown on most pizzas is something entirely different.

> And of course the much harder american "mozzarella" stuff thrown on most pizzas is something entirely different.

Not really! It's essentially the same cheese, but instead of put fresh into brine the stretched curds have the water pressed out and then they're aged.

Amul in India has "milk" (unspecified cow and buffalo milk ratio) Mozz as well as buffalo, which is marketed as more premium. Didnt know the Italians set the precedent. IME both are untangy.

Their copy: "The cheese is made out of pure buffalo milk, which makes the melted cheese creamier and whiter in appearance.When heated the product develops stretching property and melts uniformly on the food surface."

Hah, timely. Apparently there is a current (or at least I only encountered it recently) marketing trend in (at least) Germany and the USA of calling cow mozzarella "Fior di latte", to make it out as something special, when all it means is that it’s the slightly cheaper Mozzarella made from cow’s milk instead of buffalo’s, and is what the vast majority of Mozzarella is made out of in both countries.

> fior di latte

Same in the UK at fancy pizza places. It's £2-4 extra for buffalo mozzarella

Buffalo mozzarella is actually a trap on pizza. It contains more water and it tends to dampen the dough as it melts. Fiordilatte or Treccia are actually better, even though they're cheaper.

Oh that's interesting. Soggy pizza is the worst.

Not sure why they'd even offer it as an option but I think they've given up with the British public as they even let you order a pizza with a topping of fries !

The Italians I know swear that mozzarella should be consumed within a day of being made. And I must say that freshly made mozzarella tastes best! But also maybe because what I can get fresh was made with love and good quality milk, as opposed to the supermarket stuff.

Making of (by Claudia Romeo): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJKIA2sAE38

I'm not a cheese snob at all, but having lived in Italy for a while, I definitely prefer the buffalo mozzarella to eat fresh. It's richer tasting, somehow.

I am reasonably sure some guy in Lahore was making this too.

These days its pretty easy to get from Whole Foods or Eataly if you have one nearby. Definitely worth, especially if you're making Caprese.

Whole Foods tends to carry Buf brand, which is made from water buffalo milk in Colombia.

I am suspicious that the buffalo mozzarella registers as "tangy" at all - though I suppose it travelled quite a long way

(2011)

I feel like there are many articles/webpages where tacking on a year matters very little (eg doesn't add much either way). This is one of those cases I thought..

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