Check out the gorgeous images that photographer Steve Scalone took of my latest object of desire, a 99-cheese pizza created by pizza world champion Johnny di Francesco, of Melbourne’s famed 400 Gradi. A pizza that The Guardian says tastes fantastic.
Fantastic. Di Francesco has created a balanced and surprisingly nuanced pizza. It sounds like a supersized hot mess, the kind of novelty cuisine you might see on a menu at a suburban pizza and ribs joint, but it is anything but.
According to The Guardian, Di Francesco carefully blended 94 cheeses from all around the world for the base, a mix he calls the “supercheese”. After the blend is properly melted, he then added five more cheese to the top: Fior di latte, buffalo mozzarella, goat cheese, ricotta and shaved raspadura. The reason is that some cheeses don’t play well with the others as he told ABC News:
I tried six different times before I got the right texture and the right flavours. I quickly learned that you had to melt down the cheeses so that you wouldn’t get stringiness,” he said. “You had to use the right cheeses. For example, you couldn’t melt down mozzarella because the curds break down.
I just want to grab one, fold it four times and shove it inside my mouth.