A procedure for the manufacture of goat milk cheese with controlled-microflora by means of high hydrostatic pressure

Cheesemaking techniques (including a high pressure treatment) suitable for the production of controlled-microflora cheese, are described. Starter-free and starter and rennet-free cheeses were made and a high pressure treatment was applied to some of them. Starter-free cheeses and their pressurized counterparts had higher moisture but lower pH than control cheeses. Under the same conditions pressurized cheeses had higher water-holding capacities but similar degrees of proteolysis, as show by Kjeldhal analyses of water-soluble nitrogen fractions and the electrophoretic patterns, and similar plasmin contents as unpressurized cheeses, suggesting that the pressure conditions used did not affect the cheese enzyme activities. The high pressure treatment step, after cheese salting, allowed cheese production with very low initial counts and without strict aseptic conditions during cheesemaking. Copyright (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd.