Pizzaiolo Breaks Record With 1001-Cheese Pizza
A chef in Lyons, France has just broken the world record for cheese toppings by adding a ridiculous 1001 different cheeses onto a pizza. When does cheesiness become just too much cheesiness? I think we may have found our answer with this curdling creation.
By Richard Cole · December 28, 2023
France is a country where it’s safe to state that there are people who are VERY cheese-obsessed. After the latest World Record attempt though, we may have underestimated their dedication to the dairy arts. This week, some French pizzaiolo named Benoît Bruel (and his friends Fabien Montellanico and Sophie Hatat Richart-Luna) went and broke the record for the most cheeses on a single pizza. We’re talking over a thousand cheeses - not sure I could even name fifty cheeses, let alone finding a thousand different ones to throw on a pizza!
Now, before you go running out trying to recreate this monstrosity at home, let me just say that this thing doesn’t exactly look like your average pizza. In fact, it looks more like a cheese avalanche that just happened to land on top of some dough - this mound of fromage wouldn’t look out of place on top of Mount Everest.
But who am I to judge? Benoît seems pretty proud of his creation and his world record. He says he spent a whole five months scouring France for all these different cheeses, and that many of the farmers and cheesemakers gave him their stuff for free just to be part of the record. I guess when you’re talking about a thousand cheeses, free cheese is kind of the only way to go. Their new record of 1,001 cheeses surpasses Morgan Niquet’s record of 834, achieved in 2021.
So, how did they even cook this thing? Well, according to Benoît, they had to pre-cook the dough so it wouldn’t collapse under the ridiculous weight of all that cheese. Then, they used a cookie cutter to hold everything together while it baked for, like, two minutes. Because apparently, that’s all it takes to cook a thousand cheeses without them all turning into a molten mess.
Of course, the big question is: how did it taste? Benoît says it was “amazing,” but I’m not so sure. I mean, I love cheese as much as the next guy, but a thousand different kinds of cheese all at once? That sounds like a recipe for developing spontaneous lactose intolerance, if you ask me.
But hey, more power to Benoît. He’s clearly passionate about his cheese pizzas, and who am I to stand in the way of a man’s cheesy dreams? Just maybe next time, he could use a few less cheeses and make something that actually looks like a pizza. Or, you know, he could just open a cheese shop. I’m pretty sure there’s a market for that in France.
In the meantime, I’m going to go stick to my good old-fashioned pepperoni and sausage. With extra mozzarella. And a few shakes of parmesan. And maybe some gorgonzola. Ooooh, and maybe some gruyère…