Microbiological characteristics of hard cheese with flax seeds

Highly nutritious dairy products such as hard cheeses are considered a good source of protein, fats, mineral substances, and vitamins and are consumed in significant quantities. At the same time, the disadvantages of cheeses include the presence of a large amount of saturated fatty acids in their composition, which are associated with the development of cardiovascular diseases. Therefore, modifying the composition of fatty acids in hard cheese by increasing the content of unsaturated fatty acids and reducing the amount of saturated fatty acids is extremely important for consumers' health. This research aimed to determine the dynamics of microbiological indicators in the ripening technology of hard rennet cheese with different contents of flax seeds as a source of omega-3 fatty acids. The technology of hard rennet cheese with 3-5% flax seed content was investigated. A 1.3 times higher content of lactic acid microflora was found in samples of hard cheese with 5% flax seeds during the first 10 days of ripening compared to the control sample of cheese. On the 60th day of ripening of cheese with a content of 5% flax seeds, the number of lactic acid bacteria was 9.4 ±0.3×109 CFU/g, and in the control cheese – 7.8 ±0.3×109 CFU/g. During the production and ripening of cheese with different content of flax seeds, no exceedance of normative values was found for the number of Enterobacteriaceae and Staphylococcus aureus bacteria. A method (washing the seeds in a sodium bicarbonate solution and drying at a temperature of 95 ±1 for 20 min) of processing flax seeds before adding them to the cheese mass was proposed, which reduced the number of mesophilic microorganisms by approximately 200 times to 3.9 ±0.1×101 CFU/ g, fungi by 160 times to 0.3 ±0.1×101 CFU/g and aerobic mesophilic bacilli by 78 times to 1.1 ±0.1×101 CFU/g. Therefore, the developed hard rennet cheese with flax seeds can be consumed as an additional source of omega-3 fatty acids and dietary fiber.