The Best Guide to Provel Cheese Part 1

Love it or hate it, Provel cheese is king in St. Louis. Recent transplants to this area might not have much of an opinion on Chuck Berry or Charles Lindbergh, but I guarantee you transplants to St. Louis have strong feelings for Provel cheese.

The debate between the lovers and haters of Provel is usually separated by the St. Louis natives (who grew up with Provel cheese), and the transplants (who generally think it is nasty).

During my experience at St. Louis University, I had classmates from Virginia, Maine, Florida, and other various states. Some of the transplants had strong opinions (mostly negative) about Provel cheese. At the Greek Festival at St. Nicholas in the Central West End, my Virginian roommate Aaron Moores and I had a conversation with a very bitter woman from the east coast about living in St. Louis. She complained about her allergies and the extreme variation in temperatures. I proudly told her that we had been to Ted Drewes and Imo's Pizza. Then I said, "Speaking of Imo's Pizza, we are the home of the great Provel cheese." That statement led her to give a profanity ridden rant on "God-awful" Provel cheese and its terrible qualities. The woman said, "Provel is overly processed, tastes disgusting, I never eat it and it's one more thing in St. Louis that I hate."

Fortunately, not every person born outside of St. Louis dislikes Provel Cheese. My old roommate Aaron Moores accompanied me to Imo's Pizza a several times, and while he is not in love with Provel like I am, he enjoyed the pizza. The rest of his family, Russel and Missey Moores are also fans of St. Louis-style pizza. When they come back to visit, you can be certain they will eat at a St. Louis-style pizza place. Aaron says that most people who do not like Provel have a problem with its texture.

On the other hand, I observe people who are raised in St. Louis LOVE Provel cheese, putting it on salads, using it on sandwiches, even eating plain Imo's Provel string cheese, which is sold at local grocery stores like Schnucks.

If you click on the link below, you will see Viviano and Sons Italian Grocery ships Provel cheese to many happy customers from Pennsylvania, Idaho, Kansas, Indiana, Florida and Texas. No doubt the customers are most likely St. Louis natives who are pining for the privilege to come back to St. Louis and taste Provel's goodness.

http://www.shopviviano.com/products/Provel.html

Examples of other polarizing foods or ingredients:

I edited this picture to read Provel instead of Marmite. Are you a Provel lover or hater?

"Besides the obvious mushroom, olive, anchovies, kale, or other nasty vegetable, Peeps and Marmite stick out in my mind as having a similar Provel cheese polarizing effect on people."

Marmite is a sticky, dark brown food paste with a distinctively salty flavor. Their slogan is "Love it or hate it." The product was discovered in the early 1900's and is made out of concentrated brewer's yeast. Although it has a high salt content, it is also fortified with B vitamins and other healthy attributes. People typically use Marmite on toast for breakfast, in sandwiches at lunchtime, mixed in cocktails, and sometimes is eaten with cheese.

Picture of Peeps before I decided to eat them

Surprisingly, Peeps are a contentious Easter candy. I have eaten them almost every year since I have been born and they are a sign of Spring, that Easter and better times are here after brutal St. Louis winters. The divide in my family of five was strong, with two haters of Peeps, two lovers of Peeps and one neutral. I could go into greater detail about peeps, how I love to eat them, how I bite different parts off of each little chick I eat, and how they are healthier than most other kinds of Easter Candy. But I won't. The point is that with Peeps, like Marmite and Provel Cheese, you either love it or hate it.

My next post will have a more detailed look into the history of Provel cheese.

How to tell good pizza from bad? Give the P of approval!

The P of approval was dreamed up by me and my sister Krista as a way to signify great pizza. If you think this is a slightly ridiculous symbol, consider this: the French give a hearty burp as a sign to compliment the chef. Therefore, no one should be alarmed when a customer uses their hands to make the P sign of approval to the waiter. Eventually, if the P of approval catches on, restaurants will have have a picture of me, stlpizzaguy, giving the P of approval, and also get others to give the P of approval when their pizza meal is satisfying. If you decide to go to a pizza establishment and follow my lead, please send me a picture. Soon, I will have a user submitted photo gallery of great pizza.

My sister Krista, the originator of the "P of Approval"

Making the P of Approval at a mystery pizza restaurant, it is definitely on my top 10 list.

Lately on my pizza journey, I've been researching Provel cheese and am considering a road trip to Wisconsin to track down the origin of Provel. More Provel cheese oriented posts coming soon!!!

Welcome to St. Louis Pizza Blog

Coffee, Tea, or PIZZA

Pizza is my passion! I’ve been keeping a top 10 list of St. Louis Pizza places since the Fall of 2012 and created this blog to help the great people of St. Louis expand their pizza tastes. The purpose of this blog is to help St. Louis city and county residents appreciate pizza the way it ought to be appreciated. 

St. Louis is a great place to live. Most St. Louisans are passionate about their Cardinals, or their Blues. Our little known secret is both the abundance and quality of our pizza places. When it comes to pizza, I do not discriminate between thick and thin or St. Louis style pizza. I’m an equal opportunity pizza lover.

My requirements for a good pizza include

• Some type of meat (sausage, pepperoni, bacon, capicola)
• Good cheese
• Tomato sauce, I like to keep it traditional, no bbq pulled pork olive oil mixed with peanut butter and jelly.

Keep a lookout over the next few weeks for my top 10 list of St. Louis pizzas and special pizza facts.

MY SILLY PIZZA OBSESSION

This is a story of pizza's important role in life events.

During Memorial Day Weekend of 2014, my great friend David Castellucci made me the best man at his Miami wedding at the very last minute, and a big part of being the best man includes giving a speech to more than 300 people at the reception. Weddings are typically the bride's day, but I wanted to give the guests an insight into David's life. So I mentioned in my speech that were law school buddies and we also tried more than 50 St. Louis restaurants, with two-thirds of them pizza places. I went on to mention how much David loves deep-dish pizza. The third and final time I mentioned pizza in the speech was how it landed me my first job in the legal field.

Little did I know that mine and David's pizza trips were leading to anything besides expanding my waistline. I asked guests to travel back with me three months to February 2014 at a job interview I had with the Franklin County Prosecuting Attorney's office. The head prosecutor and his six assistants sit down at the table. I am a little bit intimidated at this time because of the amount of people in the room. And the first question, "tell us about yourself" had me pretty befuddled because how do you summarize all your years of your life in a pithy statement? I paused for what seemed like forever, until a friendly interviewer asked me, "so do you like pizza?" At this point in the interview, a gigantic smile came to my face because I now knew I could knock this question out of the park. Sharing my love for deep dish, and sharing my top five pizza places helped me get a job that day. It also helped that my interview was right before lunch on a Friday. Thank you pizza for being a great icebreaker in a job interview and great comic relief at a wedding.

"Not only did I mention pizza in the wedding speech once, twice, but THREE times thereby making a holy trinity of pizza. Even though some in the crowd were probably perturbed I wasted their precious time, I delivered a great speech about David and our weekly adventures to restaurants around Saint Louis University in our pursuit for great pizza."

However, not every story about pizza in my life is positive. One of the MOST common complaints ex-girlfriends have had against me is that I would only take them to pizza places.

Anyways, I am planning on serving pizza at my wedding some day. Does anyone have any thoughts? Feel free to share your pizza stories by commenting on this blog, and expect me to release a top 10 pizza place every two weeks. 

Now you can tell your out-of-town friends what EXACTLY makes a great St. Louis-style pizza, plus dazzle friends and family with amazing pizza facts.

• 93 percent of Americans have eaten pizza within the last month, thereby making PIZZA more American than Apple Pie or a Big Mac hamburger.
• Pizza originated in Naples, Italy.
• Pepperoni is the most popular pizza topping in the United States.
• When do people order the most pizza? The most pizzas are ordered on SUPER BOWL Sunday.

St. Louis-Style Pizza

Every once in a blue moon friends tell me, you're the pizza dude, so what exactly differentiates St. Louis-style pizza from others. My basic, uninformed answer is the super-thin crust, combined with provel cheese and is cut into squares. Nothing is wrong with that answer, but let us get a little more specific so we can give our friends a good, thorough answer next time we are asked that question. We should know our pizza and be proud of our region, because sometimes the St. Louis-style comes under attack from out-of-towners and provel cheese haters.

THE LONG ANSWER:

The definitive characteristics of St. Louis-style pizza are a extremely thin crust made without yeast, the common use of Provel processed cheese, and pizzas cut into squares  instead of wedges.

• The thin, cracker-like crust is made without yeast. The crust is crispy and cannot be folded.
• As a result of its thin crust, St. Louis-style pizza can be layered deeply with many different toppings because of the sturdiness of the cracker-like crust.
• The pizza is cut into three or four inch squares. According to legend, Ed Imo, founder of Imo's pizza back in 1964, was a tile layer and possibly got inspiration from this type of work.

THE CHEESE: PROVEL

Provel cheese was developed by the St. Louis company Costa Grocery in the 1950s and is made in Wisconsin primarily for the St. Louis market. According to St. Louis Post-Dispatch food critic Joe Bonwichstates that Provel was developed to meet perceived demand for a pizza cheese with a "clean bite": one that melts well but breaks off nicely when bitten. Provel is not legally labeled as simply cheese because it does not meet the moisture content required by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Provel is instead considered a pasteurized processed cheese.

HOWEVER, it is although Provel is a hallmark of St. Louis-style pizza, two popular St. Louis pizza establishments DO NOT use Provel cheese: Fortels Pizza and Pappo's.

THE SAUCE:

The tomato sauce is often seasoned with more oregano than other pizza.  Some of the sauces have a greater sweetness to them than pizzas from other places in the U.S.

RECIPES TO MAKE YOUR OWN ST.LOUIS-STYLE PIZZA:

Just in case the plethora of pizza places in St. Louis would somehow all shut down, and you would be forced to make pizza yourself, here are two noteworthy recipes to make your own.

http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/st-louis-style-pizza-recipe

http://www.food.com/recipe/imos-pizza-recipe-st-louis-style-pizza-380004