Yogurt contains many microorganisms that are beneficial to human health, and is a probiotic that supplies many nutrients such as calcium and protein. It is difficult to safety preserve for a long time because it possesses a high content of water. To address this problem, powdered “instant” yogurt has been developed, but it has flaws low flowability and solubility. Therefore, yogurt was granulated using a fluidized bed granulator to increase flowability and solubility. The fluidized bed granulator was designed by using response surface methodology (RSM), whose variables were feeding rate (FR), atomization air pressure (AP) and product temperature (PT). After being granulated, the yogurt was analyzed for yield and lactic acid bacteria count. The maximum yield of yogurt granules was 79.42%, at FR of 0.54 mL/min, AP of 2.64 kPa, and PT of 58.18℃, and the colony count for lactic acid bacteria was more than 6 log10 CFU/g. Therefore, spherical granulation of yogurt using a fluidized bed granulator could be used for making convenient probiotic products with improved flowability and solubility.

• 신명곤(우송대학교 외식조리영양학부) | Myung-Gon Shin (School of Culinary Nutrition, Woosong University, Daejeon 34606, Korea) Corresponding author