OBJECTIVE MEASUREMENT OF THE STRETCHABILITY OF MOZZARELLA CHEESE

Despite the great attention that has been devoted to cheese rheology to date no rheological analyses to characterize cheese stretchability by well-defined physical terms has been proposed. This paper illustrates the possibility of using a test commonly used to characterize polymer melt response to spinning to objectively measure cheese stretchability. The behaviour of cow milk Mozzarella cheese with varying temperature is presented. The results show that there exists a well-defined temperature range in which the cheese can be stretched, and that within this range there is a temperature at which the cheese stretchability reaches its maximum value.