Journal article
Industrial freezing and tempering for optimal functional properties in thawed Mozzarella cheese
AP Pax, L Ong, RA Pax, J Vongsvivut, MJ Tobin, SE Kentish, SL Gras
Food Chemistry | Published : 2023
Abstract
Mozzarella cheese was industrially frozen (‐18 °C), stored for up to six months, tempered at 4 °C for one or three weeks and the structure and functionality compared to cheese stored at 4 °C and cheese aged at 4 °C for four weeks prior to freezing. When combined with ageing or tempering, the slow industrial freezing minimised changes to the protein network as detected by confocal microscopy and arrested proteolysis. Cheese functionality improved with three weeks of tempering, with properties similar to cheese refrigerated for one month, potentially due to increased proteolysis and protein rehydration. Frozen storage induced β-sheet and β-turn structures, as detected by S-FTIR microspectrosco..
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Awarded by Australian Research Council
Funding Acknowledgements
This research was supported by The Australian Research Council (ARC) Industrial Transformation Research Program (ITRP) funding scheme (Project Number: IH120100005) . The ARC Dairy Innovation Hub is a collaboration between The University of Melbourne, The Uni- versity of Queensland and Dairy Innovation Australia Ltd. We thank the Advanced Microscopy Facility and Biological Optical Microscopy Plat- form at The Bio21 Molecular Science & Biotechnology Institute and The Particulate Fluids Processing Centre for access to equipment. S-FTIR data collection was conducted at the IRM beamline at the Australian Synchrotron, part of ANSTO.