Kefir fermented milk as starter culture in Minas Frescal cheese production

The present work aimed to produce Minas Frescal cheese with the replacement of the commercial lactic culture by fermented kefir milk with kefir (FKM) and verify some of its physicochemical characteristics, aiming mainly at the development of a new commercial probiotic dairy product with low production cost as compared to the use of commercial probiotic cultures. Kefir grains were added to whole UHT milk and fermented at 22ºC/24 hours in an incubator, after fermentation the grains were separated and the FKM was used in the manufacture of cheeses with the addition of 1, 3 or 5% of the total volume of milk. They were analysed the concentrations of fat and protein in the milk used in cheese manufacturing; the acidity of FKM, milk, FKM-added milk, whey and cheeses; in those ones their total solids (TS), fat and fat in the total solids (FTS) and manufacturing yields were evaluated. The results obtained indicated that it was possible to produce Minas cheeses using KFM in all of the tested concentrations because the results for all treatments were close to those found in the literature with the use of commercial lactic cultures and among the treatments only the acidity had significant differences, however more studies should be carried out mainly aiming at the standardization of kefir cultures for the industrial process of manufacturing these cheeses.