Properties of Low Salt Soft Cheese Supplemented With Probiotic Cultures

Abstract

In recent years upsurge of interest for developing functional dairy products containing probiotics. Soft cheese is a very popular product worldwide and a good alternative for probiotic delivery into the gastrointestinal tract. So, the objective of the present study was to manufacture five treatments of low salt soft cheese. One of them without probiotic cultures keep as a control and others supplemented with probiotic cultures and four others were prepared by adding Lactobacillus casei NRC AM2 (T1), Pediococcus pentosaceus NRC AM4 (T2), Lactobacillus rhamnosus NRC AM6 (T3) and Pediococcus acidilactici NRC AM8 (T4). The resultant cheeses were analyzed for chemical, microbiological and sensory evaluation during refrigeration storage period. The results indicated that the viability of Lactobacilli and Pediococcus in all cheese treatments were increased at the first two weeks of storage then decreased till the end of storage period but still above a threshold level (106 CFU/g). The obtained results confirmed that the type of starter and/or time of storage period affected the chemical and microbiological cheese analysis. Also, Salmonella, psychrotrophic bacteria, Enterococci, coliforms and thermoduric bacteria were not detected in all cheese treatments. Also, there were variations found in fatty acid concentrations in treatments manufactured by adding probiotic cultures. In conclusion, this study demonstrated that the addition of probiotics to soft cheese made the product more acceptable in sensory properties, enhanced the shelf life and can be produced cheese with high quality and health aspects.