Effect of whey pH at drainage on physicochemical, biochemical, microbiological, and sensory properties of Mozzarella cheese made from buffalo milk during refrigerated storage

Abstract

The objective of this research was to determine the effect of drainage pH on physicochemical, biochemical, microbiological and sensory properties of Mozzarella cheese made from buffalo milk during refrigerated storage. Four vats of cheese were made at 4 different whey drainage pH (6.2, 5.9, 5.6, and 5.2). Lower drainage pH caused higher pH 4.4-soluble N and pH 4.4-soluble N:total N. Interaction of drainage pH at d 1 and 30 of storage on all soluble nitrogen fractions was significant. Degradation of caseins in samples made at a drainage pH of 6.2 was lower than that of other cheese samples. The decreasing whey drainage pH significantly increased counts of thermophilic and mesophilic lactobacilli of the samples during refrigerated storage. No coliforms or Escherichia coli were detected in the cheeses. The average sensory property scores of all cheese samples were very close, and, as expected, storage time had a negative effect on all sensory scores.

Effect of pH at drainage on the physicochemical, textural and microstructural characteristics of mozzarella cheese from goat milk

“…According to the literature review, the general ranges of pH drainage for making pasta filata cheese (Cheddar, Daxaca, Mozzarella) from different milks (cow, buffalo, goat, sheep, and mixtures thereof), could range from 4.9 to 5.8 (Zisu & Shah, 2005;Yazici et al, 2010;Bermúdez-Aguirre& Barbosa-Cánovas, 2012;Morales-Celaya et al, 2012;Ganesan et al, 2014;Niro et al, 2014;Dng et al, 2014). At pH 5.0 (results not shown) yarn not occur, possibly by excessive demineralization mass, accompanied by protein denaturation and proximity to its isoelectric point that would more unstable.…”

“…Stretching spatially in one direction positions and "aligns" the proteins as if they were "threads". In addition, butterfat would function as a lubricant aligning the casein fiber (Yazici et al, 2010).…”

“…Several studies have reported the effects of pH on the physicochemical properties of mozzarella cheese made from cow milk (Yun et al, 1993;Joshi et al, 2002Joshi et al, , 2004Zisu & Shah, 2005) and buffalo milk (Yazici et al, 2010), but no in goat milk. In this sense, the definition of appropriate pH for the obtain of goat mozzarella cheese with appropriate characteristics, is of great interest.…”

“…In conventional production of mozzarella cheese from cow milk, the pH drops to a range between 5.4 to 5.1 (Yazici et al, 2010), thus favoring the solubilization of micellar calcium phosphate and the hydration of the para-casein, and increasing the proportion of soluble colloidal calcium (Guinee et al, 2002), which can affect final product quality (Yun et al, 1995).…”

“…However, the whey pH at draining is the most influential variable in the ability of the curd to be laminated and stretched in hot water (Yazici et al, 2010), determining the point at which the yarn is possible.…”