Frozen Pizza Isn't Complete Without Sprinkling On This Expert-Approved Cheese

Sometimes life calls for a frozen pizza, and sometimes your taste buds call for some tried and true frozen pizza hacks to upgrade the flavor. While sprinkling your favorite cheese over the top of your pizza before cooking is an easy win (and a good way to avoid messing up your frozen pizza), you may be missing out on the best option. Mashed spoke to Vincent Benoliel, owner of the California-inspired restaurant Savta in New York City, and asked him which cheese elevates frozen pizza the most.

When it came to the type of cheese to use, Benoliel was quick to offer "imported fior di latte cheese [as] the best way to elevate a frozen pizza." If you haven't heard of fior di latte, you may be more familiar with the cheese family it comes from: mozzarella. One of the untold truths of mozzarella is that there are many different types of it. Benoliel confirms this, saying fior di latte is "a type of fresh mozzarella that can withstand the high heat of the oven, and it just melts in your mouth — not to mention it's very tasty." Tasty and a member of the notoriously melty mozzarella family? Sounds pretty convincing to us.

When it comes to adding this tasty cheese to your pizza, Vincent Benoliel recommends "[buying] fior di latte whole, not grated, and then [cutting] it into slices that aren't too thin." Sliced mozzarella cheeses give a better mouthfeel than their grated counterparts, with the sticky surface area keeping other toppings from sliding off the pizza. In terms of how much to use, Benoliel does not use half measures — he covers the whole thing. "I cut them wide enough to get good coverage on an entire 12-inch pizza," he tells Mashed, "which comes out to roughly a dozen slices of cheese." In terms of how to apply that to your own pizza, Benoliel's advice reveals a helpful calculation: one slice for every inch of your pizza.

Don't worry if you can't find many variations of fior di latte on your grocery store shelves. When asked about specific brands, Benoliel said to "just make sure you're buying imported fior di latte from Italy, which should be obvious on the package. To me, the imported stuff tastes better." While the only real difference between the American and Italian variations of fior di latte is in the cows they each come from, variations in the terroir may create subtle taste differences, as cattle practices and feeds vary from country to country. In some regions of Italy, for instance, dairy cattle are raised and kept entirely indoors.