Caracterização, produção e consumo de queijos especiais: uma revisão

Abstract

Brazil is one of the main milk producers in the world and consequently of its derivatives. Among these derivatives, cheese is one of the outstanding products in production and consumption. However, the variety of these products is extensive, ranging from handcrafted to industrialized versions. One of the cheese categories that has been gaining market share in recent years, especially with the pandemic, are specialty cheeses. Also called fine cheeses, these products usually differ by high prices in the market, when compared to the most common cheeses of everyday life such as mozzarella, white cheese and fresh mines. The high price of these cheeses is due to their various stages of manufacture that add value to the final product. One of the stages that most add value to these cheeses are the long periods of maturation, in which they need appropriate spaces for this process to occur. Another factor is that cheeses require the use of cold rooms and equipment that control temperature and humidity throughout the process until storage. In addition, it is necessary to use specific ingredients in the production process, such as cheeses in which the development of mold is desirable, such as Gorgonzola, Brie and Camembert, as in addition to the high value of the mold itself, these still need to be used. together with specific lactic culture that facilitate the growth/development of these molds throughout maturation and among other various peculiar stages of the process. Anyway, as the name justifies, these cheeses are special and also require special conditions for them to be made. Thus, in order to understand the entire process that lead to this high added value, a literature search was carried out in articles, lectures, books and scientific journals in order to present in this work these main characteristics, stages of production and consumer market that they call it special cheeses.