Comparative Analysis of Meltability and Stretchability in Commercial and Plant-Based Cheeses

Abstract

The global market for vegan cheeses is growing rapidly; however, replicating the complex dairy casein micelle network, which confers elasticity, meltability, and stretchability in dairy cheese, remains a challenge in vegan cheeses. This study compared commercial dairy cheeses, commercial vegan cheeses, and a newly developed plant-based formulation in terms of meltability, stretchability, texture profile, surface morphology, and molecular characteristics. The final formulation was a soy-potato protein blend containing 10% protein by weight. Stretchability testing showed that commercial vegan cheeses had low stretchability (approximately 29-56 mm) compared with mozzarella cheeses (more than 200 mm). The developed formulation had a stretchability distance of 75.42 ± 3.06 mm, which was higher than that of commercial vegan cheeses tested. The developed formulation had a final melt diameter of 37 mm, indicating moderate meltability. Texture profile analysis indicated that the developed formulation had moderate hardness, but its lower resilience, cohesiveness, and springiness suggested that its cold-texture characteristics still differed from dairy cheeses. Attenuated Total Reflectance FT-IR and scanning electron microscopy results supported structural and compositional differences among dairy cheeses, commercial vegan cheeses, and the developed formulation. Overall, this study demonstrates that a soy–potato protein-based formulation can improve stretchability compared with commercial vegan cheeses, although it does not replicate the stretchability of dairy mozzarella. The findings provide preliminary guidance for the future development of plant-based cheese alternatives with improved melt and stretch functionality, while highlighting the need to further optimize protein network formation, sensory quality, and instrumental-sensory correlation.