making yogurt with raw milk do i need to heat it on stove top first?

[bluebell]

i have been making scd yogurt with raw milk but the recipe i was using said that i needed to heat it on the stove top first to kill bacteria that might stop the yogurt culture working. it dosn't specifiy if this is true with raw milk. so do i still need to heat it first with raw milk or is that just relevant for pasterurized? the raw milk comes straight from the fridge so it would be cold, but i'm wondering that as i'm heating it defeats the purpose of using raw milk iyswim, i then add a shop bought organic live yogurt as a starter and leave it in the airing cupboard (which is a lower temp than a yogurt maker) for 24 hours as per the scdiet.

[avendesora]

I've made raw yogurt - don't heat the milk first. It works fine. Just make sure that all your utensils, etc., are clean. However, you'll need to adjust your recipe to take into account that you're starting with cold milk. If your recipe says to let it sit for 8 hrs, let it sit for 12 instead, because the culturing only works once the milk/yogurt has hit 115 degrees or so. Just so you know what to expect - I've never had raw yogurt thicken the way pasturized yogurt does. It ends up being more like a drinkable yogurt. Still tasty, still healthy, but not quite what you might be used to.

Aven

[dogmom327]

Using a yogurt starter meant to work without any heat helps immensely. You can still get reasonably thick yogurt (you can eat with a spoon rather than drink) that way.

[melamama]

I do make raw milk yogurt, but I only heat it up to 110 for the starter. Like mentioned it doesn't get anywhere near as thick as if you would heat it higher, but I like it a little thickened so I do heat it gently.

I suspect that you're not really heating to kill bacteria to let the yogurt starter work (that doesn't seem to make sense to me, as yogurt is a pretty basic tf), but it has something to do with the protein structure of the milk.

[melamama]

Originally Posted by dogmom327

Using a yogurt starter meant to work without any heat helps immensely. You can still get reasonably thick yogurt (you can eat with a spoon rather than drink) that way.

thank you for this---I didn't even know about a yogurt starter for room temp.