Milk & Starter Culture

[peppermintpatti]

Hi

I live in Belgium, (about to embark on the 1st cheese) fresh milk from the local supermarket is rather scarce, they use mostly long life milk here. But I have found a very nice farmer who sells me milk - this is raw milk and according to my book 'and thats how you make cheese' you need to pasteurize the milk. I think it would be a shame to do this. Any suggestions would be most helpful.

PS : Has anyone made their own starter culture (like the one from and thats how you make cheese book) from a freeze dried thermophillic culture.

[saucisson]

Welcome to the forum. There is no reason to pasteurise the milk and in fact many small scale farmhouse producers of artisan cheeses use unpasteurised milk, but of course there is a greater risk of having some undesirable bacteria in there. Just don't feed it to pregnant women and I'm sure you will make a great cheese. Others on the forum use fozen cultures and may be along shortly to advse you.


Dave

[peppermintpatti]

Thanks Dave for the info. The good thing about the farmer that sells me milk is that sells most of his milk to one of the major dairy producers. Suppose that a plus.