Bespoke - fermented dairy products

The increasing global demand for protein rich dairy products and dairy products with low content of sugars and fat provides novel possibilities for the use of milk protein ingredients (MPIs).  In order to enable the industry to tailor ingredients and develop new and sufficiently stable fermented products, a fundamental understanding of the chemistry governing interactions between milk constituents and MPIs and how this can be manipulated is necessary. This, in turn, will aid in developing the market potential for Danish MPI and dairy products by providing a platform for development of new fermented products with a novel level of tailored texture, excellent stability, specific functionalities and robust, cost effective and energy efficient industrial scale production.

The main scientific objectives of the project are to:

• Fundamentally understand the type of binding involved when milk components and milk protein ingredients interact depending e.g. on degree of denaturation, ionic strength, molecular properites, pH and available calcium.
• Clarify how the molecular interactions affect the structure, texture and stability of fermented dairy products. Focus will be on how specific levels of free thiol groups in milk protein ingredients can  be used to control the amount of protein interactions during heat treatment and subsequent acidification and how this affects the firmness and stability of fermented dairy products
• Optimize process parameters (e.g. heat and shear) in order to maximize desired functionality (physical stability, shininess, no grainines) of MPI in fermented dairy products.
• Develop predictive models for stability and other macroscopic quality parameters

Full title: "Bespoke fermented dairy products; new strategies for understanding and controlling protein ingredient-milk component interactions during processing (BESPOKE)"