People love pizza for various reasons — it’s delicious, customizable, and versatile. But the connection to agriculture is what gets us. That, and the cheese!
While some of us are fond of ordering extra cheese, and one to two types of dairy goodness are known to be included in the delicacy, French pizza chefs have created the cheesiest pizza of them all. Two chefs and cheesemakers set a new Guinness World Records feat by topping their handcrafted masterpiece with 1,001 types of cheese.
Benoît Bruel and Fabien Montellanico along with the cheesemaker Sophie Hatat Richard-Luna and Florian OnAir surpassed Morgan Niguet’s record of 834 cheese on a pizza set in 2021.
It took Benoît five months to secure all of the cheese varieties, and Guinness World Records reported that many farmers and cheesemakers donated their cheese to the cause.
This isn’t the first time that Benoît has set a world record. His first noteworthy pizza was created in 2020 with 254 different cheeses. Since then, he has quadrupled the number of cheeses, securing 940 varieties across France and 61 from other countries.
It took some pizza engineering to ensure the pizza dough could hold the weight. The dough was pre-cooked to prevent tearing, and then two-gram cubes of each type were placed on the pizza base. Softer cheeses were layered on top of harder ones, and a cookie cutter held the mound of cheese together during cooking.
“It’s been a real feat being among the cheesemakers as well as being on the farms to meet the producers who are so passionate about their profession,” Benoît told Guinness World Records. “I have been a pizza maker for 13 years. I invented my own pizza recipes, and since working in my own business, my only dream is to make pizzas with the widest variety of cheeses.”
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