I love the testing! So cool that you identified problems and updated your method accordingly, instead of just straight comparing all the cheeses. My favorite combo has been Be-Hive cheese (kinda expensive though, since I order online) mixed with Miyoko's liquid mozz and some Follow Your Heart or Violife parm on top. I use a pizza oven though so I'm not sure if it works as well in a normal oven.. I haven't tried the Daiya blocks though, I certainly will now, thanks! Speaking of Be-Hive, I mainly order from them for their pepperoni since it's seriously next-level. Since you're the seitan master I'd be curious of your thoughts if you ever get some.
I thought these tricks might help but didn't try them out until I was filming, really glad they worked out! Mixing the mozz and parm sounds great, I think a lot of pizzarias do that normally so that makes total sense. Had never occured to me though. A lot of people focus on the cheese, but really great pizza is about layering flavors. As far as Be-Hive, I've never heard of that brand and will keep an ye out for sure!
I honestly very much disagree on one of them, I've tried all of them multiple times and by far the absolute best one if you follow the instructions on the container is the liquid mozzarella, it's genuinely been life-changing for me honestly
I'll experiment more with it for sure - as I mention in the video I cooked it for the same time as the other pizzas and it probably needed longer in the oven. I also used the suggested amount on the bottle for a 10" pizza and that was too much IMO. Next time I use it, I'll cook it for longer, add some salt, and maybe use a tablespoon less and let you know how it goes.
Loved this video as it narrows the category of Mozzarella cheese accurately. Traditional Italian pizza has olive oil added on top before placing it in the oven. That said, adding oil to the cheese makes perfect sense as does adding oil to any pizza for extra mouth feel.
Uprating despite dad puns. [scowls] Really surprised that Daiya, which I have always thought tastes like melted white Crayola crayon, was the winner, but perhaps it was their reformulated recipe, which I rarely see in these parts. Last year sometime, I saw a vegan food blog hack--which I can't find now--recommending just blitzing one's favorite vegan cheese shreds in a small blender, or a measuring cup with a stick blender, with an equal volume of neutral-tasting plant milk to ensure that it melts fully. I will look for the cheeses you used here because I'm curious to see if they result in a superior pizza with less trouble. Thanks for posting!
Sorry to hear that puns are nacho favorite thing. For me, the take away is less about any specific brand, but more that shredding blocks (or slices) is almost always going to yield a better result than using shreds due to the added starches. This is also the same for non-vegan pizza cheese. If you watch any non-vegan pizza making videos they all grate blocks of low moisture mozz. Come to think of it - I don't think I've ever seen someone on YT use pre-packaged shreds. Also, I think it is difficult right now, for whatever reason, for large scale vegan cheese makers to mimic the complexity of white cheese, so using a harvarti, gouda, or whatever other "flavored" block adds a nice complexity lacking from vegan mozz.
I've been vegan for over two decades now -- I tried Daiya when it first came out and HATED it (my non-vegan friends at the time loved it, and said it tasted just like dairy cheese, so maybe it was too close for me?). I was hesitant to try their reformulated cheeses, but they are heavenly now -- far and away much better than their original formula. If you get the chance, you have to try them!
Great video and tips! I happen to really love that liquid Mozz from Miyoko’s for homemade pizza. There’s even a local non-vegan pizza joint that uses that for their vegan pies, it’s great!
I always wanted to try Miyoko's cheeses, but they dont sell outside of the US. I work in an Italian style chain restaurant that does vegan pizza, we use something called mozzarisella and it's horrible to work as it comes in frozen and it melts into more of a sauce. It tastes fine but i prefer to use it in small amounts personally. We have another brand call Sheese in the UK and their fake mozza is probably the best I've had so far, similar to Daiya but a lot cheaper at least in my market.
All the vegan cheese keeps getting better every year. I bet the food processor trick would work on those too. If you try that out let me know how it goes!
I had a really good result when I mixed daiya cutting board shreds with good planet shreds. Good melt, pull, and a clean mozerella style flavor. Give it a shot!
Best method for cheese I've done so far, is cooking it on the stove top with a good plant Milk (Oatly, Ripple, or Next Milk) seasoning it, then adding it to my pizza. It does indeed bubble and get melty at this point. You can even add more tapioca starch for increased stretch.
While in Walmart going over to the soy tofu section, Walmart now has its own vegan shredded mozzarella cheese. Haven't tried it yet primarily bought it for making a pizza.
Really? Wow, everyone has vegan cheese these days. Pretty amazing. Just 10 years ago buying vegan cheese was something you had to go to specialty stores for incredible how far it has come.
Great review - thanks! Can you link to your pizza dough recipe? Cheers Oh, one tip... lay your grater on its side and you can take advantage of the whole length of the grater's surface
Great tip! For this video I used this recipe linked below for its simplicity since I had to manage the logistics for making ~10 pizzas. It is pretty good, but I think that since there is so little yeast, you don't get a nice fluffy crust (that is personal preference though, it might be great for others): www.bonappetit.com/recipe/no-knead-pizza-dough Right now I'm experimenting with fermented doughs, biga and poolish, once I get a dough and homemade cheese recipe that I like I'll probably make a full video about my pizza making process. That might be a next year thing though - pizza making is such a surprisingly complex art and each element is it's own rabbit hole.
I’d imagine just like dairy pre shredded cheeses their coated in some gmo crap to keep it from sticking together. So hand shredding a block of cheese will always melt better.
Hi bro! I haven't tried any commercial vegan cheeses yet. I do make my own with homemade almond milk. Very economical to make. However a good thing to know which commercial cheeses are best to take when travelling. Thank you, take care.
That is really cool - I've dabbled in vegan cheese making, but I haven't made anything that I think would work well on pizza yet. Hopefully this helps people decide what cheese to buy!
@@BoldFlavorVegan /// Bro, when all else fails, there's commercial cheese to save the day. At times my mozza cheese fails, so I make it into a thick white cheese sauce. I make a Pesto and Cheese Sauce pizza, no tomato sauce, and top it with black olives, onions and cooked Beyond Sausage sliced. The Pesto sauce is a vegan type and the marriage between the Pesto sauce and Mozza sauce is very delicious. Just an idea. Take care.
Well over in the UK I've been experimenting making copy cat papa johns with different cheeses. Next one is a deep dish pizza hut one It'd be really interesting to see you mske a video using UK vegan cheeses Here's a few that I've tried and maybe you can too Applewoods smoked or non smoked (easily melts better than the others and tastes good) Cathedral city (melts decent, has the tanf of cheddar) (Careful with cathedral and apple woods as they have non vegan counterparts) Wicked kitchen (probably least like cheese) Plant kitchen (from M&S) Plant menu (aldi brand of vegan cheese) Vio life Plant chef Sheese Ilchester (melts on par with applewoods) I haven't tried enough of the other brands here like nurishh and other random ones but if you happen to import some over, it would make a cool video
Tip to get melted cheese with pretty much any cheese I've tried is too microwave it covered 2-3 minutes. Maybe stir ~halfway through for certain brands. Then put on crust and bake pizza or use for whatever else.
Derek Sarno puts his in a food processor with a little bit of vegan yogurt or sour cream! He says it gives that bubbly liquid type texture with a tangy flavor
Great video! I'm sure your forearms are nice and sore from kneading all that dough! The biggest issue I have with vegan cheese is that there's never enough salt. Dairy cheese has an absurd amount of salt and for some reason every vegan cheese manufacturer is too afraid to add enough salt. I used to use the myokos block and toss it in the food processer with extra salt. I'm wondering if adding a bit of oil to it would make it more melty
I actually used a no-knead recipe for that reason! And yes, I 100 percent agree, NOT ENOUGH SALT. The wonderful fermented flavors are there but they are muted due to the lack of sodium. I don't know if they are trying to keep the sodium on the label down or what is going on. Sometimes I add a pinch or two of a 50/50 salt/MSG blend right before launch in the oven.
gonna have to disagree on Follow Your Heart! something about the flavor is so addicting. 😋 they use Follow Your Heart at some pizza chains like Mellow Mushroom and Toppers. also not sure if putting it through the food processor would do anything to help the texture, but i'll give it a shot.
Love Mellow Mushroom! I'm looking to recreate their fluffy crust right now actually. As I said in the video, I liked the flavor, just wasn't a huge fan of the texture hence the food processor trick.
Glad to know that's what they use because I had my one and only restaurant vegan pizza at Mellow Mushroom and the 'cheese' was gummy and literally stuck to the roof of my mouth like peanut butter - just disgusting stuff!
Agree with your assessments, though I haven't tried the modifications you suggested, yet. Thanks for doing this, you have no idea how many meals you'll salvage! My go-to is marinated artichoke hearts. The ones that come in oil, NOT in water. They don't taste like cheese, but they're medium-softly textured, and have a pleasantly light sharpness to their flavor, that falls between a mozzarella and an extra sharp, for me. Before I went vegan, I was a pizzaholic, and Godfather's and Pizza Factory were my go-to dealers. If you're not familiar with the brands, they didn't skimp on the quality of their ingredients. You PAID for it, but it was ALWAYS worth it. The vegan mozzarellas that I have tried -most of the ones, in the video- have been good, but each lacking something, which deprived me of full-fledged enjoyment of the pie. Just like in the video, my mind focused so much on what was missing, that it took away from my enjoyment of what was there. The artichoke hearts are a reliable go-to, for me, especially if I'm not in the mood to roll the dice on something new, or to buy something, and then, put in WORK, to make it how my taste buds think it should be.
Surprised you didn't try Field Roast Chao. Because they don't have mozzarella specifically or not available to you locally? It's in Target in my area so I thought it'd be widely available these days. Oh also VioLife as I see that at my area stores often too.
This is what a trip to 3 stores yielded and I don't think I saw those. Probably should have gone to better stores! I actually have tried shredding their blocks on pizza and it was great. Would probably also work well with the oil trick. For me I think the moral of the story is that grating a block will likely always be better than shreds, regardless of brand.
2:54 exactly which is why I just take slices of cheese and put them on top and bake. I don't shred. Where's your just placing slices on top? It gives the best goo.
That probably tastes great! I didn't think it would look very good to have the squares there so I didn't test that one out as I was also going to aesthetic.
I so greatly appreciate this ... I'm a caterer and don't eat alot of cheese vegan or not. We have a vegan baby shower and I need a yummy vegan -mozzerella and Gouda cheese
I’m new to not eating dairy and am the kind of person that could eat a block of cheese in a sitting. I had a slice of Follow Your Heart Smoked Gouda for a snack yesterday and it was the closest to real cheese I’ve ever had.
Oh nice! That is really good to know. If you find other cheeses that you think are close to the dairy versions it would be much appreciated to learn about that as I haven't had the latter in a long time.
hey! Do try Ilchester Vegan and also their Applewood Vegan products if you can find them. They are available in Canada and the UK to my knowledge. I've never found a cheese that melts and behaves as closely to the real deal.
First of all, you didn't even include Violife, which has an AMAZING vegan cheese line. For shreds, my trick is to wash it off and add a touch of oil. Miyokos round does best as slices, and I always give it a minute under the broiler. The liquid is just so-so, in my opinion.
Ahh mate, this must've been brutal. We really appreciate the lengths to which you go in the name of science... Eating all that pizza is pure dedication :)
I break the v cheese up with my hands and I mix different cheeses together. I also add the follow your heart parm as I use that for flavor. I like using original daiya as it was oddly better in texture but lacked flavor. But mixing that with other cheeses seems to work really well, I use more of the parm though. I make pretty decent fresh pizza. Also I use the daiya cheddar flavor for pan pizza, again original (which is hard to find now) as like a crust. I got that idea from ATK. But it’s so good. I will be stealing your oil idea. Now I want pizza 🙈.
Should I give Daiya another go? Never liked it. Always thought it was responsible for giving vegan cheese a bad name. Because of taste texture etc, I have pronounced it more appropriately "dire", because it is, imo. With all the competition, have they improved. Miyokos cheeses are quality cheeses, imo, but the best cheaper cheeses come from Violife
Trader Joes almond mozzarella is incomparably the best, but it isn't completely vegan. If you add a little Go Veggie parmesan to the TJ's mozzarella you can't tell the difference from milk mozzarella. Jeannine
I do for sure but sometimes I just like to buy it and that led me to this question. Surprisingly, I wasn't able to find an answer on the internet already so thought I'd give this a whirl and hopefully help some people out!
I dont think you can compare the jalapeno havarti to mozzarella. What about them were you comparing? Sadly, these all look unappealing to me. Wrong texture, wrong taste, wrong look. I can eat a soy curl and think yeah, pretty chicken-y, but you’re not fooling me with this cheese. Im not going to drop the $6 for fake cheese that’s all wrong. Somethings you cant fake, and I fear vegan cheese is one of them. No reflection on your efforts tho!
If you ever travel to Eastern Canada, try Gusta (I live in Québec, where it was created, but I know they sell it in Ontario -- I think they're branching out to the Maritimes as well, but I'm not sure). Perfect melt, goeyness, and taste (it doesn't pull, but I don't care about that, and I've never found a vegan cheese that pulls like dairy cheese), and (usually) cheaper than the bigger name brands, to boot!
Ohhh, I'll have to try that out if I can ever get my mitts on that. Please have a bagel for me, one of my food highlights from visiting Québec many years ago.
@@BoldFlavorVegan will do! :) I know Montréal bagels are different than NY bagels, but The Preppy Kitchen just published an accidentally-vegan bagel recipe this week -- I made them, and they are amazing. I highly recommend his recipe if you don't already have one of your own. :)
