I usually make pizza with cheese from Gordon Food Service, or from cheese I get at the grocery deli counter. You can’t trust shredded mozzarella, especially if it’s part-skim. Usually, it has no flavor and the texture is like naugahyde.

Today I went shopping at Costco, and I noticed they were selling Belgioioso provolone for about $2.50 per pound, sliced. And their price for bulk shredded part-skim mozzarella was only a little higher. I had to give them a try.

I made a 16″ pizza, using Bonta sauce and the dough recipe from my book. I chose to add a tablespoon of gluten to the dough, and although I didn’t put any fat in it, I coated it with olive oil before I let it rise. I find that oil on the outside of the dough and extra gluten make for a great crust that’s easy to toss.

I put sauce on the dough, and then I sprinkled what I guessed was about six ounces of mozzarella on it. Then I tried to apply the same amount of provolone. Unfortunately, I wasn’t paying attention, and I caught a few double slices, so I ended up using more provolone than I wanted.

The nice thing about thin slices of provolone over part-skim mozzarella is that the high fat content of the provolone makes it hard to burn, so you end up with a pizza that isn’t scorched. Part-skim mozzarella burns very quickly.

The pizza was excellent, except for the overabundance of provolone. Because I used so much, the pizza oiled off in places. And this brand of provolone is pretty salty. I put a few anchovies on the pizza, and wherever an anchovy coincided with a double slice of provolone, the salt was too much.

Nonetheless, it works if you do it right.

This is a great discovery, because it’s so cheap. With ten pounds of cheese, you can easily make thirteen or fourteen pizzas. Your cheese cost will be around two dollars per pie. If you use top-quality commercial sauce, like Stanislaus or Bonta, you’ll pay something like thirty cents for sauce. For three dollars, you can eat yourself into a coma.

My book is mainly intended to make people laugh, but the recipes work, and if you’re trying to feed a family on a shrinking food budget, this recipe could be a lifesaver. If you’re uptight about nutrition, you can replace half of the white flour with whole wheat, and you can top it with all sorts of vegetation. Imagine serving four people their favorite meal for six dollars. The key to making it work is to freeze the sauce in small portions so it doesn’t spoil. A vacuum sealer will do it.

Sorry I didn’t take a photo. The pie didn’t last long enough.

Give Costco cheese a try. And while you’re at it, consider the weirder cheeses they sell in wedges and blocks. They may be too strong to apply all over a pie, but a few pieces here and there can be really tasty.

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I made another pie today (Tuesday, August 5). This time I weighed the cheese. It turns out Costco provolone weighs one ounce per slice. I use 12 ounces of cheese on a pizza, so I used six slices plus six ounces of Costco mozzarella. It was wonderful. Still some oiling off, but you’re not going to be able to avoid that unless you get provolone in thinner slices, and that means forget the Costco price.

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