{"id":4064,"date":"2024-10-17T03:03:55","date_gmt":"2024-10-17T03:03:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/what-makes-cheese-stretchy\/"},"modified":"2024-10-17T03:03:55","modified_gmt":"2024-10-17T03:03:55","slug":"what-makes-cheese-stretchy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/what-makes-cheese-stretchy\/","title":{"rendered":"What Makes Cheese Stretchy?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Grilled cheese with stretchy cheese photo credit Second Mouse Cheese<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When it comes to stretchiness, cheese stands alone. Virtually no other food replicates the ooey-gooeyness of a mozzarella or a triple cream.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But even among cheeses, the ability to melt and flow isn\u2019t universal. There are \u201ctwo large forces at work that will determine whether a cheese will stretch or not,\u201d says Dean Sommer, cheese and food technologist at the Center for Dairy Research<\/a> in Madison, Wisconsin\u2014and he has a simple analogy to understand it.<\/p>\n

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The calcium and protein Structures of cheese<\/h2>\n
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Dean Sommer<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThink of a wooden ladder,\u201d Sommer says. It has two long rails held together by multiple shorter rungs. In cheese, the rungs of the ladder represent calcium and the rails represent the protein structure.<\/p>\n

In a young cheese, the ladder\u2019s rungs stay tightly bound to its rails because there\u2019s not enough time for the lactic acid that ferments it to loosen them up. When the ladder stays intact, the cheese does not stretch.<\/p>\n

As a cheese matures, though, that acid gradually dissolves the bond between the calcium and protein structures. \u201cOver time, the rungs of the ladder become much more infrequent and weaker, and now the rails can slide past each other,\u201d Sommer explains. The shimmy they perform is the cheese stretching. The ladder still has all its pieces but they\u2019re no longer in their original places.<\/p>\n

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Cheese acidity and meltability<\/h2>\n
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pH cheese melt chart credit Cheese Science Toolkit<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The cheese\u2019s acid can only dissolve so much of the wood before the whole ladder falls apart, however. When the rungs are loose and whittled down, and the rails are chopped into bits, the cheese is no longer stretchy. The ladder is now so broken, it can\u2019t be repaired.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe protein structure is destroyed and it doesn\u2019t stretch very well,\u201d says Sommer. \u201cSo, like mozzarella, the first week to two weeks it doesn\u2019t stretch very well. Then, say, from two weeks to two months, it stretches really well. But after two months, it\u2019s just kind of soup and it doesn\u2019t stretch well at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Although many cheeses stretch when heated\u2014-Gouda, Cheddar, havarti, muenster, and Gruyere, among them\u2014mozzarella, which is repeatedly pulled as it is cooked, is the meltiest of all. The method \u201caligns all the protein fibers in a parallel fashion so they\u2019re ready to be stretched,\u201d Sommer says. \u201cYou can stretch it for six feet without breaking it. Other cheeses will stretch but nowhere near that length because they don\u2019t undergo that cooking, stretching, and kneading process.\u201d Provolone has a similar stretch because it goes through a parallel process.<\/p>\n

Like older cheeses that lose their stretchiness over time as acid breaks down the \u201cladder\u201d of calcium and protein, cheeses like feta or cottage cheese that are high in acid from the get-go won\u2019t stretch either\u2014but for a slightly different reason.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When there is a lot of acid, \u201cthe strands of proteins stick together like two magnets sticking together,\u201d says Sommer. \u201cThe proteins can\u2019t slip by each other because they\u2019re so tightly bound by electromagnetic forces.\u201d In a lasagna, the layer of ricotta looks the same after cooking as it did before while the mozzarella on top essentially liquifies. <\/p>\n

Think of it in Goldilocks terms: Cheese with too little acid won\u2019t stretch; cheese with too much acid won\u2019t stretch; but cheese with enough acid to dissolve some, but not all, of its calcium, is just right for melting.<\/p>\n

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Grilled cheese with stretchy cheese photo credit Second Mouse Cheese When it comes to stretchiness, cheese stands alone. Virtually no other food replicates the ooey-gooeyness of a mozzarella or a triple cream.\u00a0 But even among cheeses, the ability to melt and flow isn\u2019t universal. There are \u201ctwo large forces at work that will determine whether … Okumaya devam et “What Makes Cheese Stretchy?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1271,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[395],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-milk-and-diary"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1271"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4064\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}