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Seventy-five blocks of low-moisture part-skim (LMPS) Mozzarella cheese were procured from an industrial cheese plant, and the relationships between the physicochemical and functional properties were evaluated during refrigerated storage. In total, cheeses were obtained from 1 cheese vat on 7 different production dates, at two-to four monthly intervals, over a 1.5 year period; all cheeses were made using a standard recipe. The cheeses were held at 4°C for 0, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 or 32 d and assayed for composition, primary proteolysis, serum distribution, texture profile analysis, heat-induced changes in viscoelastic behavior, cheese extensibility and melt characteristics. The results demonstrated a substantial increase in serum uptake by the calcium-phosphate para-casein matrix between 1 and 16 d of storage with a concomitant improvement in the functional performance of the cheese. Extending the storage time to 32 d resulted in further changes in the functional quality, concurrent with ongoing increases in protein hydration and primary proteolysis.Differences in the measured characteristics between the cheeses obtained on different sampling occasions were evident. Principal component analysis separated the cheeses based on their variance in functional performance, which was found to be correlated mainly with the calcium content of the cheese. The results indicate that the manufacturing process should be tightly controlled to minimize variation in calcium content, and enhance the quality consistency of the cheese.

A time‐domain 1H nuclear magnetic resonance relaxometry method was elaborated for the rapid microstructural characterization of mozzarella cheese. For this purpose, there is a strong need to know how the experimentally determined T2 relaxation time distribution can be related to specific constituents in mozzarella. In this study, a detailed investigation is offered for fresh and aged low‐moisture mozzarella cheese, often applied as a pizza cheese, by application of both a conventional Carr–Purcell–Meiboom–Gill (CPMG) sequence and a free‐induction decay CPMG (FID‐CPMG) sequence. The relaxation behavior was further elucidated by addition of deuterium oxide and by mild heat treatment of samples. The relaxation times of water protons in mozzarella were found to range from a few microseconds to some tens of milliseconds (in aged mozzarella) or to about hundred milliseconds (in fresh mozzarella). The upper limit of the T2 distribution can even be extended to the seconds range upon releasing water protons from the mozzarella matrix using a mild heat treatment or upon addition of deuterated water. Both stimuli also provided evidence for the absorption of water into the cheese matrix. The potential release and uptake of water demonstrated that mozzarella acts as a very dynamic system during production and storage. The detected differences in the behavior of the water fraction between fresh and aged low‐moisture mozzarella might be utilized to study the influence of either production and/or storage conditions on the cheese ripening process.

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