Funding: Berriker 2023 Eusko Jaurlaritza/Gobierno Vasco – 00013-BGI2023-54 Espedientea
The general objective of the ONDTEK project is to carry out a planned study to establish physicochemical reference parameters that will serve to validate the production process of cured sheep cheese.
By means of this project, an investigation will be carried out on the physicochemical values that the cured sheep cheese must present during its production process, thus parameterizing the physical-chemical reference values that will allow to evaluate the production process.
To this end, the production process of sheep's cheese will be studied and cheese production will be carried out at the Dairy Center based on usual processes. In addition to analyzing the quality of the milk, different physicochemical analyses will be carried out throughout each of the productions, in order to subsequently, and from the results obtained, calculate the values of the ratios of great importance in cheese technology, in each of the productions.
The aim of this project is to determine these values and ratios appropriate for cured sheep cheese, thus developing an objective tool for cheese dairies. The cheese factories will be able to know if the cheese production process has been carried out correctly and if the cheese meets the conditions to face the ripening and ripening process. In this way, they will be able to establish corrective measures in the short term, guaranteeing an adequate level of quality of the different cheese batches and avoiding the production of defective batches.
In order to validate the defined ranges of physicochemical values, the different batches of cheese produced will be analyzed by sensory analysis, following the working methodology of the Dairy Center at the end of the ripening process.