"What's the difference between Buffalo milk mozzarella and cow milk mozarella?" That's not the set up to a joke, at least not any one I know, but somethingI wanted to know and decided to find out. First let's make the distinction between fresh mozarella and the other kind. Fresh mozzarella is fresh, as in recently made. It has a pretty short shelf life like fresh milk. It is formed into gumball to baseball sized globes and kept in a watery brine. Fresh mozzarella is bright white and seeming formed of layers of fresh cheese. "Plain mozzarella", the stuff sold in bricks and found topping most pizzas is dryer and yellower. It tastes more like cheese whereas fresh mozzarella tastes like milk. So what's the deal with these Buffalos? Well, first think water buffalo, like the Flintstones' Loyal Order of the Water Buffalo, and not like "tatonka" in "Dances with Wolves". Their milk is creamier, has a higher fat content than cow milk, I have read. I have never drunk any as of this writing, but I have tasted the cheese.

I bought the fresh mozzarella the day before trying it. There was no produced by date and only a mysterious "Use by" date that seemed to lack enough digits to be a date, so I do not know how fresh it really was.

Fleming and I agreed that the fresh buffalo mozzarella was softer that other fresh moz. "Softer, but that doesn't mean creamier," she noted. "The taste is so much stronger but the texture is so much softer". Other fresh mozzarella I have tried was softer outside than in, absorbing water from the brine. This was just the opposite, softer in the middle. It tasted like slightly sour milk, "lemony", but with no after-taste. Pleasant, clean flavors. I don't know if the slight sourness was typical or due to shelf life. When I try it again I will follow up.

If you're making a Caprese salad I think the real buffalo milk cheese would play well with tomatoes' acidity and basil's spice. Great on its own too.

Name: Mozzarella di Bufala
Type of Milk: Buffalo, Pasteurized
Type: fresh
Produced in:
Date Produced: Unknown
Date Purchased: 11/4/2006
Date Eaten: 11/5/2006
Purchased Where: United States, North Carolina, Raleigh, Whole Foods
Price: $15.99/lb.