PRODUCTION OF SOFT CHEESE BY USING NANOFILTRATION (NF) MEMBRANE SEPARATION TECHNOLOGY

This work aimed to harness the most advanced and modern technology, nano-filtration technology, in order to overcome the obstacles facing the most important and most common dairy derivative and the most common and used around the world, soft cheese. Therefore, cow's milk was obtained from a reliable source and two soft cheese were prepared from it: (NC) was prepared from natural milk while (CC) was prepared by nano-filtration technology. The results indicated the feasibility of using concentrated milk using the nano-filtration technique in the production of soft cheese, as the use of concentrated milk with the nano-filtration technique reduced the time required for cheese from 35 to 8 minutes and increased the cheese yield from 12.11 to 26.51% when adding the same percentage of rennet to the same amount from natural milk or concentrated milk. Also, the chemical composition of (CC) was richer in nutrients than natural cheese (NC), the values of protein, fat, lactose and ash were (21.41, 26, 4.16 and 4.52%) for the first cheese and were (13.30, 18.25, 2.17 and 3.16%) for the last cheese respectively. In addition, the total microbial number was (0.11x102) for (CC), while it was (0.23 x102) for (NC), molds and yeasts, spore-forming bacteria and Chloform bacteria were (0.19 x102), (0.31 x102) and (-) respectively while they were (0.15 x102), (0.23 x102) and (-) for (CC) respectively.This is despite the high selectivity of the nano-filtration technology and its preservation of the nutrients in the milk. Finally, from the perspective of sensory properties, (CC) had a higher acceptance than the (NC) by the judges, the scores of texture, flavor, aroma and general acceptance were (8.3, 8.2, 8.4 and 8.2) for (CC) compared to (6.8, 6.8, 7 and 7) respectively for (NC).