The Relative Effect of Milk Base, Starter, and Process on Yogurt Texture: A Review

Yogurt is a milk curd produced all over the world, obtained by a lactic fermentation of a milk base enriched with milk proteins, and sometimes sugars and thickeners. One of the most important sensorial attributes for yogurt is texture, which could be assessed by sensory or instrumental analysis. A lot of work has been published in studying the contribution of milk base, starter, and process on yogurt texture in order to develop new textures, or simply to reduce fat content, or the level of addition of protein and thickener in milk. However, these studies are limited to only a few factors. The topic of this review was to synthesize the data of literature, with the aim of extracting and classifying factors on the basis of their influence on yogurt texture. Three factors, milk base heating, starter, and yogurt shearing after fermentation, respectively, play a key role in the elaboration of texture. The control of these three parameters allows the improvement of the textural attributes of yogurts by 2 to 15 times.