Simple utilization of lactic acid whey in dairy processing

The use of ultra-filtered lactic acid whey retentate was investigated for the making of sour cream. The utilization of lactic acid whey is limited due to its special properties, so the logical utilization way is to use it in fermented products. First, we concentrated lactic acid whey collected from cottage cheese making by ultrafiltration (UF), then UF Whey Retentate (UFWR) was added (by 2, 5, and 10%) into fat standardized cream for sour cream making. We investigated the texture and sensory properties of the sour cream samples compared with the industrial products. Generally, we can state that the use of small portion of UF whey retentate did not result noticeable changes and did not reduce the sensory value of sour creams. Higher UF whey retentate addition improved some texture properties of experimental samples, but the summarized evaluation of UFWR addition was not unequivocal. Control samples showed better results. Based on our results, the sample, which contained 5% UF whey retentate, had good texture and acceptable sensory properties. Furthermore, more than 5% UF lactic acid whey retentate (coming from our own ultrafiltration process) resulted remarkably worse sensory properties than the other samples. Further investigation is needed to find the optimal composition and sensory properties of UFWR. Furthermore, we have to perform technological investigation to reach a higher concentration factor using pre-treatment of whey and to avoid the precipitation of whey proteins during the high temperature pasteurization of cream, cream mixed with UFWR or diafiltered whey retentate. We guess that the use of one-stage diafiltration would already decrease the unfavourable sensory properties of lactic acid whey retentate.