Tofu (Soypaneer) is a nutritional product prepared from soybean (Glycine max), has very low shelf life. Drying is the most widespread method which not only reduces weight and volume of the product thereby, minimizes transportation cost but also increases shelf life. Freeze drying is a process by which a solvent is removed from a frozen material by sublimation under reduced pressure. In the present investigation tofu was freeze dried at -40 °C. Textural (hardness, cohesiveness, springiness, and chewiness), rehydration, sensory and some physical characteristics (colour, water activity) of tofu have been analysed. The colour and water activity and textural properties computed/measured using hunter lab colourimeter, Hygrolab-3 and texture analyzer, respectively. Rehydration characteristics were calculated as described by Ranganna (2000). The sensory evaluation was performed on 9 point hedonic scale based on ISI (1971). The values of the rehydrated freeze dried tofu samples were recorded as colour (57.71), water activity (0.971), rehydration characteristics [rehydration ratio (2.28), coefficient of rehydration (0.99) and percent of water in rehydration (75.79)], textural properties [hardness (1367.862), cohesiveness (0.964), adhesiveness (12.227), springiness (0.11) and chewiness (144.636)] and sensory evaluation [colour (8.0), taste (7.50), appearance (7.45) and over all acceptability score (7.65)]. The qualities of rehydrated freeze dried tofu were found closer to fresh tofu.

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