Trader Joe's Shredded Pizza Seasoned Toscano Cheese

It's Friday and that means only one thing in our house: it's jammie movie pizza night! My lovely bride and our *coughcough* charming little rascals look forward to it every week...especially the pizza. Say what you will about the last twoish years, but one of the upshots is that we've really perfected the craft of homemade pizza, and are continuing to branch out...I can't wait til it's warm enough to fire up the OOni we bought ourselves for Christmas!

So yeah we love pizza here, love making it...and maybe that's the problem we have with Trader Joe's Shredded Pizza Seasoned Toscano Cheese. 

Perhaps it's silly me. I bought this on a whim on a pizza supply procurement run. I figured it'd be great atop a pizza. That's...not really the case. This cheese just doesn't melt as well as a good mozzarella. And unlike mozzarella, which adds a little of its own mildness that absorbs and incorporates spice and taste and zing from other elements of the pizza, this cheese tries to do it all by itself. It's seasoned to be a pizza, not to be for a pizza, at least to me. The garlic gets too roasty sweet and the rest of the spice blend is a tick or two off from what I prefer.

That and there's this odd tang that toscano has that I forgot that I'm always on the fence of enjoying. 

Probably if sprinkled in a salad or atop a baked potato or into some scrambled eggs I'd enjoy it a bit more. Undeniably, the toscano is going for a pizzaesque vibe, and it does taste at least somewhat like a decent pizza all by itself, and if more things could taste like pizza, well...I don't know. Maybe it's one of those "it's decent but not for us" kinda deals, especially for making pizza so we can season it as we wish, not how this cheese imposes, if you follow. 

I'll go nice and say it's not bad. If it dig it, by all means enjoy, maybe in your jammies while watching Encanto for the 17th time tonight like we just might be.

Bottom line: Trader Joe's Shredded Pizza Seasoned Toscano Cheese: 6 out of 10 Golden Spoons