Can I make yoghurt with pasteurized milk?

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Can I make yoghurt with pasteurized milk?

Postby bluehorserefuge on Fri Oct 07, 2016 12:47 am

I read my yoghurt carton and it says there is no live culture in it. My milk is pasteurized from the shop. Is there any hope at all of making any natural yoghurt at home, when both my yoghurt and milk are synthetic products? Are the only people who can make real yoghurt, the ones who can get hold of real cows milk?
Cheers for any help.
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Re: Can I make yoghurt with pasteurized milk?

Postby Christopher Weeks on Fri Oct 07, 2016 7:44 am

Pasturized milk is OK to work with, but you'll need some kind of live culture to transform it into yogurt. You might be able to get creative with the source.

(People have been making cheese from weird cultures (belly-buttons, toes, etc) and I suppose there's some chance you'd get something interesting by just trying wacky stuff. I mean, yogurt originally came from somewhere!
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Re: Can I make yoghurt with pasteurized milk?

Postby bluehorserefuge on Fri Oct 07, 2016 2:29 pm

Thanks Christopher, sorry to bang on about Ginger Bugs, but could I use a bit of that as a starter in my milk ?

Ps-

I tried adding lemon juice, but it doesn't get very thick and isn't the same thing, is it?
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Re: Can I make yoghurt with pasteurized milk?

Postby bluehorserefuge on Fri Oct 07, 2016 4:42 pm

By the way, were you serious about the belly buttons and toe nails?

Sorry to sound ignorant but could this be why blue cheeses smell of sweaty feet ? Could the bacteria be the same?

Which leads to the next logical question? Could I use my own sweat ( armpits etc) to culture my milk ?
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Re: Can I make yoghurt with pasteurized milk?

Postby bluehorserefuge on Sat Oct 08, 2016 8:37 am

Christopher that was a serious question.
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Re: Can I make yoghurt with pasteurized milk?

Postby Christopher Weeks on Wed Oct 12, 2016 6:58 am

When you ask "could I..." the only answer I can give is, sure, try it and let us know what comes out! I've never tried any of those things and can't speak to them first hand. And I doubt their success. But I don't know!

https://www.wired.com/2013/12/hungry-th ... and-sweat/

Blue cheese' blue (and primary odor) comes from Penicillium Mold. But I don't have any idea if we carry that organism on our feet as well.
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Re: Can I make yoghurt with pasteurized milk?

Postby gazaah on Sat Sep 09, 2017 6:33 pm

I wouldn't call pasteurized milk synthetic. The process involves briefly heating milk then sealing it, it's pretty much light duty canning.

Yogurt is great because the culture should, in theory, out compete any disease bacteria in unpasteurized milk but that ain't how it always goes.

This is coming from someone who crosses state lines to buy unpasteurized cheddar for the more complex flavor in my truffled mac and cheese, so no judgement -- I just like precision in language.

That unpasteurized milk has all the things that can exist in animals that crap and carry diseases as well as every nasty living microbe the product contacted during handling and storage. For example, Listeria is comprised of bacteria that really like growing at cold temperature. So your culture might be loaded with safe bacteria, but in the fridge the Listeria out-competes and you could become extremely ill. Heating the milk briefly to kill microbes means we have a safe and clean start for home fermentation. That's not a bad thing.

Sometimes, pregnant women lose their babies due to listeria. It's a shame when people try to do something to help themselves be more healthy when they feel their health is vulnerable but in reality they are exposing themselves to disease while vulnerable. I.e., elderly, compromised immunity due to illness, pregnant, or compromised liver from drinking too much... sometime these folks will seek out unpasteurized products because they believe the "good bacteria" will "strengthen" them but just end up with the disease listeriosis or more likely diarrhea that can become HUS (kidney failure due to bacterial toxins.)

With that consideration, I suggest that referring to briefly heated milk as "synthetic" or yogurt made from briefly heated milk as "not real" is a bit silly because it furthers harmful notions that exposure to disease is somehow good or better than encouraging people to be safe and healthy. Wild fermented yogurt from raw milk and culture fermented yogurt from pasteurized or powdered milk are equally real but one has a greater chance of inducing abortion and killing the elderly.

When I make my mac and cheese I don't feed it to kids and I tell my dinner guests it is unpasteurized. It has some more complex flavor for sure but it's not more real than other mac and cheese.
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Re: Can I make yoghurt with pasteurized milk?

Postby Christopher Weeks on Mon Sep 11, 2017 7:37 am

My personal experiences don't make a scientific study, but we only make cheese and yogurt from raw milk acquired fresh from an organic dairy farm and have never gotten sick. We love the seasonal flavor fluctuations, the richer flavors, and getting to know the cows that make the milk.

Pasteurization seems like a really important step if you're going to leave milk lying around for a long time before processing in an industrial manner.
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