Acid-curd cheese

The physical and chemical characteristics of cheese curd depend on the method used to form the curd matrix. The curd is formed in basically one of two ways acid or enzymatic coagulation. In acid curd cheeses (cottage, baker s, cream), the curd is formed by direct addition of acid to the milk or by lactic acid produced by the fermentation of lactose. As the pH of the milk approaches the isoelectric point of casein (pH... 

Acidification to the isolectric pH of casein using lactic acid bacteria or food-grade acids/acidogens, at 20 40 C. and resultant slow quiescent aggregation of the sensitized casein micelles e.g., for cream cheese. [A combination of acidification and rennet-hydrolysis (a smaller quantity of rennet than for rennet-curd cheeses, e.g., 5-100 versus 900-1000 chymosin units per 100 L milk) is normally used for low-fat acid-curd cheeses such as Quark and related varieties (Schulz-Collins and Senge, 2004)]... 

FIG. 1. Fresh acid-curd cheese varieties (from Guinee et al, 1993). 

Cheddar. However, acid-curd cheeses are relatively low in calcium compared to rennet-curd cheeses such as Cheddar (ca. 0.75% Ca) and Swiss (ca. 0.95% Ca) (Table III). 

Fiechter, G., Sivec, G., Mayer, H. K. (2013). Application of UHPLC for the simultaneous analysis of free amino acids and biogenic amines in ripened acid-curd cheeses. Journal of Chromatography B. http //dx.doi.Org/10.1016/j.jchromb.2012.12.006. 

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