The 4 Fold Path to Yogurt Nirvana
If you have reached this blog on the Happy Belly Foods website you probably already know how essential microbes are to all biological life processes and why probiotic and prebiotic fermented dairy foods like kefir and yogurt pack a powerful health punch. To add to that, both are very simple and easy to make at home. So absolutely no excuses to not make your own.
If you have a good starter culture making yogurt is literally child’s play. I learned to make yogurt from my mother before my teens and continue to make it. All it takes is sterile warm milk to which some fresh starter culture is added and then left to incubate in a warm undisturbed space. Yogurt takes about 8 hours to incubate or set and another 4-6 hours to chill and firm up in a refrigerator. That’s it! * Sterilise * Inoculate * Incubate * Chill* The 4 Fold Path to yogurt nirvana!
But what if you don’t have some starter culture? Would a pot from the supermarket do? The answer is that you’d have to be very lucky to get a viable yogurt batch that way. Sadly, most commercial yogurt producers use freeze-dried starter cultures to produce their yogurt. These commercial starters produce a single batch of yogurt with an expected outcome. However, they lack regenerative potency and soon the yogurt produced is slimy, stringy, with ‘off’ notes and unviable.
In cultures where most homes make their own yogurt, a ready source of starter yogurt culture is never further away than a neighbour. As mentioned earlier, that is not the case here where almost all yogurt available is produced using freeze dried culture. Despair not, all is not lost. You can make a yogurt starter from scratch. It does take a little patience but at the end of it you have a starter culture that is robust and viable and which you can share with your friends with pride.
I am now running two yogurt making workshops at Bore Place, Bough Beech, Chiddingstone TN8 7AR. The first workshop is about learning to make yogurt from a Happy Belly starter yogurt, learning to develop a starter culture from scratch. The second workshop showcases the versatility of yoghurt, transforming it into Labneh and Paneer cheeses. There is lots of tasting in both workshops and a Q & A session to whet your appetite and curiosity. As part of the workshops you will get a pot of Happy Belly yogurt to take home to enjoy and to use as your starter culture. The workshop will run from 10am – 12.30pm. To book a place please go to https://www.boreplace.org/whats-on/4362/yoghurt-making-workshop .
