In the ten months that we’ve been making delicious woodfired pizzas in Castlemaine, when I’m serving customers the MOST asked question I receive is, ‘what is fior di latte?’.

For those of us who have a solid appreciation of what distinguishes a great pizza from a good pizza – fior di latte is nothing new. The direct translation is ‘flower of milk’. But there are many who have been raised to think that pizza is a bread-like base with a gazillion toppings and shredded cheese oily enough to dissolve any decent pizza box. That’s not pizza – that’s junkfood that will leave you feeling heavy, fatty and likely affect your mood too – check out your local ‘pizza’ chain store for this variety.

Real pizza made using authentic cooking techniques that have been used for generations is not like that. Pare it back; quality ingredients and enough time will create a light dough that when topped with a few tasty ingredients will ensure that you can actually taste the pizza and feel satisfied, but not bloated.

So back to fior di latte.

It’s cheese – the real mozzarella. Those is the food game will be familar with mozzarella di bufala (buffalo mozzarella) and the one we use is pretty much the same except it’s cow’s milk (much easier to source in Australian country towns). When we’re not using fior di latte we’re using asiago another beautiful cheese perfect on pizza…we do source that one from Italy, but I’ll talk more about that next time…