Can pasteurized milk turn into yogurt by itself?
During the winter, I often leave milk on my porch to make room in my refrigerator.
During a recent warm spell, I had an unopened gallon of pasteurized milk on the porch for two days around 50 degrees Fahrenheit. When I opened the bottle to see if it had survived, it had no spoiled milk sour smell, but the consistency was similar to thin yogurt. I drank a little, and it tasted like normal unspoiled milk aside from the texture.
I was to nervous to consume the whole gallon, so I threw it away, but I'm curious about what process might have been at work here. Could it have been a yogurt like bacteria despite the pasteurization?
Best Answer
What you got is more properly characterized as buttermilk (in the current usage of the term) than yogurt. Pasteurization does not sterilize milk, and it can have been any kind of bacteria which can survive in milk. The process was the same as in any other cultured dairy: bacteria started multiplying, producing lactic acid which curdled and soured the milk.
The harsher the pasteurization, the less chance that you happened to have an abundance of a benign culture. You could have gotten something dangerous, or harmless-but-gross. Traditional buttermilk making by leaving raw milk unseeded with any culture out and hoping that it harbors no baddies is also unsafe by today's standards. So, if you want to produce buttermilk or yogurt, you are much better off starting with a culture. A few spoonfulls of prepared yogurt or buttermilk should work (unless their culture was killed), but for best results, you should match culture and fermentation temperature.
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Quick Answer about "Can pasteurized milk turn into yogurt by itself?"
Yes, unopened. I brought it home from the grocery store and put it on the porch. It could have been some type of fermentation, but since you didn't initiate it, throwing out the milk was the right thing to do. Pasteurization is not sterilization.Can pasteurized milk make yogurt?
You can make yogurt out of regular store-bought pasteurized milk, organic milk, raw milk or even goat's or sheep's milk. Pasteurized milk, the kind you find at the grocery store, is basically milk that has been heated up to 180 F in order to slow the growth of bacteria in milk, which lengthens its shelf life.Can milk turn to yogurt by itself?
It is made by heating milk and combining it with two live cultures\u2014Lactobacillus bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus. The warm milk creates the perfect environment for the bacteria to grow, thickening the milk to create yogurt.Can Pasteurised milk ferment?
Pasteurized milk does not contain the beneficial bacteria necessary for the culturing process to work and form a soured milk. Instead, you end up with putrid, rotten milk. So, the only ingredient you need is unpasteurized milk.Why is my milk turning into yogurt?
The more lactose they convert into lactic acid, the more acidic the milk becomes. Once the milk sufficiently becomes acidic, caseins (proteins found in milk) begin to clump together, which changes the consistency of the milk to form a thicker substance: yogurt.How does milk turn into curd? | Kitchen Chemistry
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Answer 2
as far as I know, Lactic acid (byproduct of fermenting yeast or bacteria) this is a natural preservative that inhibits the growth of harmful bacteria. In my case I know a person that actually make cheese in the same way you accidentally did. So to my knowledge once the milk doesn't smell bad you are good to go.
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