Effect of milk type on caerphilly like cheese quality

Abstract EN

Caerphilly cheese is a British Welsh cheese originally processed from cow's milk and similar in its characteristics with Ras cheese, the most popular hard cheese variety in Egypt, which needs three to six monthes to sharp flavour.

However Caerphilly cheese this period can be shorter than 3 weeks to reach the same organoleptic properties of Ras cheese.

To process that variety under the Egyptian conditions, three types of milk processed into Caerphilly cheese as the following, 100% cow's milk, 100% buffalo's milk and mixture(cows: buffalos' 1: 1).

Resultant cheeses were chemically, physically, microbiologically and sensory evaluated at zero time and throughout the repining period.

Results indicated that, cow's milk gained higher quality cheese with low yield (12.91% ) while, buffalo's milk gave harder and harsh cheese with higher yield (15.80% ), as well as, mixture milk gained medium yield (13.01% ) and the highest score of sensory properties (78/100) in fresh cheese and (88/100) after the 45days of storage period compared with other treatments.

Cheese made from buffalo's milk obtained the highest value for each of total solids, fat, ash and total protein when compared with other treatments either in fresh or after 15 days of ripening period.

Cheese made from mixture milk had the lowest total counts of all types of cheese microfloura either it was fresh or after 15 days of storage.

Moreover, mixture milk cheese had the best rheological properties [Adhesiveness (g), Hardiness (N), Springiness (mm), Cohesiveness (Ratio), Gumminess (N), Chewiness (J) and Modulus (g/mm)] among cheese treatments.

So, from these results it could be recommended to process Caerphilly cheese from mixture from cows and buffalo's milk to obtain the best characteristics and medium yield.