Effect of Lactose-Reduction in Murciano-Granadina Semi-Hard Goat Cheese on Physicochemical and Sensory Characteristics

Semi-hard pressed goat’s cheese, a traditional matured cheese in Andalusia, has a residual lactose content that may affect people with intolerance to that carbohydrate. Nowadays, lactose-free dairy products are characterized by presenting a scant sensory quality, far removed from their traditional profile for their pronounced sweet and bitter taste and aroma related to Maillard reactions. The aim of this work was to make a cheese with a similar sensory profile to that of the traditional Andalusian one but without lactose. For this purpose, the doses of the enzyme lactase that would be necessary to add to the milk were investigated so that, during the manufacturing of the cheese, there would remain enough lactose for the starter cultures to trigger lactic fermentation and, in turn, to spark the cheese’s own maturity processes. The results show that the combined action of lactase (0.125 g/L, 0.250 g/L, 0.5 g/L, and 1 g/L) and of the lactic bacteria reduces the final content of lactose to below 0.01%, complying with the European Authority of Food Safety’s recommendations for considering the cheeses as being under the denomination “lactose-free”. The physicochemical and sensory values resulting from the different batches of cheese obtained indicate that the lowest dose studied (0.125 g/L) had very similar ones to those of the control cheese.