No Mess Yogurt Making

Step 2 Preparing the milk.

The next step is to bring the milk to a temperature that will kill any bad bacteria that is already present. You do this by scalding it.

1. Pour milk into jar.
2. Put jar into pot of water on stove. Make sure the water line comes to about half way up the jar of milk.
3. Turn stove on high.
4. Periodically check milk until it reaches the temp of 185 F, or if you don't want to use a thermometer just wait until you can see tiny bubbles starting to form around the edges of the milk. It will also begin to form a skin on the top.

Comments

[coorodden]

Did as you said with towel on the bottom and water half way up. Broke my jar. Lost my good rich raw milk. What did I do wrong? I started with cool water in the pot, turned the ceramic burner on medium, then on high. It was fine at medium.

[jamina]

If you're using unpasteurized milk, heating it to 185 essentially defeats the purpose of using unpasteurized milk to begin with. Most sources state that heating to just under 110 is perfectly fine for raw milk, and you retain the benefits of the raw milk cultures.

Store bought milk is full of weird stuff though, so I'd heat the hell out of it just to be safe.

[pstuart]

If you are starting with pasteurized milk then bacteria shouldn't be an issue. That said, this step helps denature the milk proteins which makes for a much thicker, creamier yogurt.

[The_Cloaked_One]

It's not that it's the bacteria in the milk itself, its external bacteria in the instruments that can mess with the fermentation. They do it for the same reason they do in making beer and wine.

[The_Cloaked_One]

And it can be that the milk was contaminated by bacteria in the air.