Catching the Bug(s)
All this talk of fermenting milk has resulted in several requests for a homemade crème fraîche recipe. In fact there’s already one on the site, right here. Have fun!
READ ONA little hair of the mare.
Based on what I’ve written on the subject of fresh-fermented dairy so far, you might be tempted to think that bacteria are the only microbes that can ferment milk. This isn’t so. There are a few oddball varieties of yeast that can do it too. What difference does yeast make in a yogurt culture? Quite […]
READ ONThe Wide World of Fresh-Fermented Dairy
Reader Thames asked me to comment on kefir, which is a yogurt beverage that originated in the Caucasus region (essentially the dividing point between Europe and Asia, roughly the area of extreme southern Russia, Georgia and Azerbaijan). That part of the world is what you might call a hotbed of milk fermentation, and brother do […]
READ ONHow to Make Yogurt
What an anticlimax this is going to be after all this talk — just a lot of shots of white things. But that’s the reality of fermentation: all the really sexy stuff is happening on scale that’s far too small to see. Hmm…maybe I should buy a microscope and become a lactic acid bacteria voyeur. […]
READ ONVery cool photo…
…sent to me last night by the folks at the Bowling Green tourism bureau, of the Duncan Hines museum there. Don’t you wish grocery stores still looked like this?
READ ONYogurt with a Bang II
Reader Gerhard in Vienna did a little research and dug up this clip on the German and/or European myth that lightning and yogurt are connected. “This folk wisdom has a basis in reality. In agrarian societies it was customary to place a jug of milk in a warm place [to culture yogurt]. In the evening […]
READ ONDid I Forget to Mention…?
Where the word “yogurt” comes from? It’s Turkish and it means “thick.” No surprises there. Except, why do we use the Turkish word for yogurt when there were so many other yogurt-eating peoples so much closer to Europe that the Turks? The Greeks, for example, and the Scandinavians. The answer is because yogurt first entered […]
READ ONKyrgyzstani Cream Cheese
With all the talk this week of microbes, dairy and culturing, some of you out there are probably wondering what the difference is between yogurt making and cheese making. Oh who am I kidding? No one’s probably wondering that. But I have no other ideas for an intro and it’s mid-afternoon already. As it happens, […]
READ ONDon’t ask, don’t tell.
The missus had a good question about probiotic critters last night. She wanted to know whether when you make yogurt at home using a commercial probiotic yogurt as a starter, you grow more of those same probiotic bugs in your batch. My guess was yes, if only because everything that’s in those factory-made cups probably […]
READ ONGarden on the Inside
Priobiotics is the term for edible microbes that are supposed do good things in our insides. For nearly 100 years now, yogurt ambassadors in the West have maintained that yogurt has beneficial, even youth-sustaining properties. Science is now beginning to validate some of their claims. Microbes like Lactobacillus fermentum, L. plantarum, L. Casei and L. […]
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