So I’m actually waiting for a piece of my digital camera to be mailed to me from the West Coast, so unfortunately this post will not be illustrated; accordingly, it will probably not be very long. I made my first pass at yogurt the other day and it came out fairly well. (In case you’re wondering, yes I’m vegan generally, but I’m also really interested in the process of making yogurt, so I selected some good quality, well-produced milk and decided to roll wivit). I used whole milk from Remember When Dairy, a farm based in Yantis, Texas. The milk is low temperature pasteurized, unhomogenized, and follows organic guidelines (the farm, which opened in mid-2008 is not certified organic yet, but the cows get to have parties and eat nice grass and unmodified grains – who could ask for more?). The dairy guy at Wheatsville Co-op, the best co-op ever, was incredibly friendly, interested, and helpful in picking out the right yogurt and milk and giving advice.
Yogurt-making is very simple; basically, you heat milk to about 180°, cool it to 110°, add a little yogurt as a starter (I used White Mountain, a minimally process, organic, local Austin brand) and stir it into the milk, pour it into a jar, and incubate it at about 122° F. Temperature varying seems to be ok (with slightly cooler incubation temperatures, not hotter — it will kill the bacteria). To incubate it, place the jar of milk-to-be-yogurt in an insulated cooler and fill the cooler with 120° water high enough that the lid is above the water and the bottom of the jar is still touching the cooler. This is obviously a simplification and you should consult sources if you’re gonna try making yogurt, but it’s basically a very simple process.
Try the yogurt after a few hours and if it’s not ready, allow it to ferment more. I used primarily Sandor Katz’ Wild Fermentation and David B. Frankhauser’s Web site as guides, and they both seem like good resources to consult. They differ on certain things, for instance Frankhauser estimates a 3 hour ferment while Katz suggests 8-24 hours depending on your taste preference. This is kind of nice to see because it shows that a lot of the steps of this process are flexible, which is encouraging.
Anyway, some tricks I’ve found:
My Longhorns (I live in Austin, now, so everything is branded with Bevo the Longhorn – yes that’s a creepy name, but that’s another post for another blog) cooler leaked the first time I made yogurt. This time I’m trying it in the bathtub – good idea Laura.
Also, I found that water out of the bath tub is approximately 122°, the perfect incubation temperature for the yogurt (I cooled it slightly, because 122° is on the high side of the acceptable temperature range and I’d prefer to err on the side of caution). The bathwater is definitely NOT mixing with the food being made, but in the cooler surrounding the tightly sealed jar of yogurt. Hopefully this will turn out well. All in all, this second attempt took about 10 minutes prep time, whereas the first attempt took much longer, so if this comes out well, the world of yogurt-making will be MIIIINE!!!!
Ok, I lied. It was kind of a long post. I’ll try to get some pictures soon to justify longwindedness.
Jonny Grass
2 questions:
1) would this work if you had a crockpot to turn on low and stick your jar of yogurt in?
2) could this be done with soymilk?
Hey Colleen,
1. I think the crockpot would work really well. I sounds like a good idea. The difficulty with the cooler method was that my recipes said leave it for 8 hours or so before you check it, but in my first batch, when I came back to check it, the water temperature had dropped to about 100 degrees. So the crockpot might be a good way of stabilizing the temp. Just keep checking back to make sure it hasn’t gotten too hot or cold. Incubating in the over is also a good tecnique, though I tried making tempeh in our electric oven and I couldn’t stabilize the temperature cool enough to have success. At the bottom is a link to a cheap yogurt maker, which seems like a $26 alternative to any of these plans, though I’ll probably try to work it out.
2. I just looked at a few soy yogurt recipes and they look roughly the same (although they both called for microwaving the soymilk). The one issue they brought up is getting the yogurt to gel; they suggested using pectin or, even better, agar agar. It sounds successful enough – in fact, I might try adding agar agar to my next batch of dairy yogurt to smooth it out. I also wanna try using coconut milk. Let me know how it goes!
Yogurt Maker
Soy Yogurt Recipe
http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2007/01/making-soy-yogurt.html
Soy Yogurt Recipe Without Starter Culture
Mister Grass:
Two follow up questions:
1) How did that second batch of yogurt turn out with the longer incubation time, and the new cooler techique?
2) Shall I expect something in the mail on next month?
Also, I’m probably going to post on gundru tomorrow…i’ll be drying those turnip greens on up.
Colleen: any new on fermented millet island?
A buddy of mine in PDX wanted to do big batches of yogurt in a slow cooker, but found out that the temp. varied to wildly for his liking. Something about how much the pot has to cool down before it’s electronically triggered to heat way back up? The average temp. is right, but the highs and lows weren’t great. I bet that varies, though.
THAT WAS A DOUBLE ENTENDRE DID YOU GET IT?
On the other hand, a NOTHER PDX homie (now in Seattle, writing about SCIENCE) (YAY) makes yogurt by putting the jar of goodies in a pot full of water, putting the pot on the stove, and turning it on really low. She leaves it cookin all night. Brave, yes. Delicious, yes.