The dairy ingredients confer diverse structure and texture forming properties and functionalities, making them promising raw materials for 3D printing. Despite the immense scope of utilization, little knowledge exists regarding the exploration and optimization of dairy formulations for 3D food printing, such that there have been only a few dairy products successfully printed. The study investigates the structure-forming potential of heat desiccated milk semi solids in a multicomponent system for the novel and sustainable technology of 3D printing. The investigation establishes a relationship between the rheological behaviour, water distribution, and particle size of dairy gels on the printability of 3D constructs. The assessment of printability was carried out by evaluating the dimensional stability of the printed constructs. The results showed that the dairy gel systems exhibited shear thinning pseudoplastic behaviour with flow behaviour index ranging from 0.22 to 0.51 and average diameter ranging between 144.9 to 181.1 nm. In addition, the systems displayed predominant viscoelastic solid behaviour with storage modulus ranging from 216.88 to 7026.4 Pa. Immobilized regions of water were observed in NMR analysis, suggesting strong gel network. Insights achieved from the investigation could guide for improving the printability of dairy-based systems and creating novel texturized dairy structures with diverse customized structure and functionality.

Investigation of multicomponent dairy gel system for 3D printing

ACS Fall 2021

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