Relationship between Baked-Cheese Sensory Properties and Melted-Cheese Physical Characteristics

Manufacturing conditions affect the sensory properties of baked Mozzarella cheese. However, instrumental analysis of cheese at room temperature does not fully correlate with the sensory properties of cheese after baking on a cooking dish. In this study, regular and stabilized pizza cheese were aged for 10, 25, 40 or 55 days before testing. A descriptive sensory analysis was performed on cheese baked on a pizza model and was related to the rheological properties of melted cheese. The sensory firmness, breakdown resistance, rubberiness and liquid release varied among cheese types and ages. Differences among cheese types and ages were also observed in small-strain oscillatory shear moduli measured on melted cheese cooled at different temperatures. The multiple stress creep recovery test proved to provide the best correlation with baked-cheese sensory terms. Partial dehydration of cheese before melting, to mimic the water loss during the baking process, was shown to increase correlations. Practical Applications: Ingredient cheese that are baked on pizzas are required to have specific behaviors in order to meet consumer acceptance. Hence, understanding the effect of baking on cheese sensory properties and their relationship to mechanical properties should facilitate the development of new cheese functionalities. This study proposes a descriptive sensory evaluation of pizza cheese baked on a standardized pizza model. This approach increases the robustness of the quality evaluation of cheese properties. A novel method was also tested to probe the linear and nonlinear behavior of melted cheese in an effort to reduce the gap between standard rheological procedures and the sensations experienced during the rather complex action of oral processing.