Development and Characterization of Probiotic Buffalo Milk Ricotta Cheese

In the current study, probiotic L. acidophilus La-05 cell pellets were incorporated into buffalo milk Ricotta matrix. The compositional, colour, textural and sensorial parameters of control and probiotic Ricotta cheese were statistically non-significant (P < 0.05). The respective moisture, fat, protein, lactose and ash content of PRC was 75%, 6.41%, 11.88%, 4.88% and 1.86% with L. acidophilus La-05 count 7.8 +/- 0.2 log CFU/g of product. The L*, a* and b* values of PRC were 81.48, -1.70 and 9.55, respectively. Scanning electron microscopy revealed that Ricotta cheese matrix mainly consists of protein network, the particles of coagulated whey proteins were interconnected, and casein appeared as small clusters. The probiotic organism was embedded into protein matrix, which may provide an added protection to organisms. Descriptive sensory analysis characterized PRC as white, shiny, consistent in terms of color and uniform in terms of appearance with a flat flavour. Overall, the product got high overall acceptability (9.0 out of 10 scales) scores. The principal component analysis revealed four principal components of 18 sensory data explaining 92.433% of the total variance of study.