Milk is picked up at Canadian dairy farms every two days and taken to a processing plant where it is pasteurized and packaged as milk or processed into cheese, yogurt, sour cream or any of the other dairy products consumed in Canada.
How to make mozzarella cheese
Test samples of each truckload of milk are taken by certified milk receivers and sent to staff in the quality control lab.
The milk is pasteurized which involves heating milk to a high temperature, then cooling it rapidly. This process destroys any pathogens in the milk, such as salmonella and E.coli, while maintaining milk’s nutritional value.
From the pasteurizer, the milk is sent to the cheese vats. In the vats, active bacterial cultures and microbial enzymes are added to the milk to begin the cheese making process.
The milk begins to coagulate and the milk solids start to turn into curds. Large agitators or mixers are used in the vats to stir the forming cheese curds. This mixture must be well stirred and cooked.
Once the mixture has been cooked, it is pumped to a draining table where the liquid is drained off leaving just the cheese curds. The liquid that is drained off is called whey, which will be transformed into other dairy products, such as ricotta cheese.
The cheese curds are transferred from the drain table to the stretcher and cooker machine. Quality control test are done at every stage of processing. The cooker warms and stretches the cheese to give it a specific consistency.
The blocks of mozzarella are conveyed to a brine bath which is a salt solution used to cool and add flavour to the cheese. Cheese blocks stay in the brine solution for 4 hours at 4 degrees Celsius. Samples are tested again to ensure the quality of the product.
As an additional safety check, the cheese goes through a metal detector before being packaged. The cheese product will only be released if it meets all set quality control standards.
The packaged mozzarella cheese is shipped in refrigerated trucks to retailers and grocery stores across Canada.
Source: FarmFood360