Products / Cheese Processıng Lines Cream Cheese Processing
Cream cheese is produced from standardised (Double Cream Cheese (DCC), 8–12%, w/w, fat; Single Cream Cheese (SCC) 3.0–5.0%, w/w, fat), homogenised, pasteurised milk or cream.
Homogenisation is important for the following reasons:
(i) it reduces fat loss on subsequent whey separation;
(ii) it brings about, via coating of fat with casein and whey protein, the conversion of naturally emulsified fat globules into pseudo-protein particles which participate in gel formation on subsequent acidification.
The incorporation of fat by this means into the gel structure gives a smoother and firmer curd (similar to yoghurt manufacture) and therefore is especially important for the quality of cold-pack Cream cheese for which the curd is not further treated).
Following pasteurisation, the milk is cooled, inoculated with starter culture (Lactococcus lactis subsp.) and held at this temperature until the desired pH is reached.
The resulting gel is agitated gently, optionally cooled to 10–12 °C in order to prevent over-acidification, heated and deaerated. The curd is then concentrated by methods similar to those used for Quark, i.e., traditional method using bags, separator methods or UF methods.
In most cases, the curds are heat-treated, mixed with salt and stabilisers, homogenised and either hot-packed or cold-packed after cooling to 10–20 °C in a scraped-surface heat exchanger