Very 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. […]
READ ONYogurt with a Bang
Several years ago I had occasion to hear a very unusual story about yogurt from one of the oldest of Chicago’s old-school German chefs. I was working on an article on food preservation at the time, and nobody but nobody preserves food like a old German, my friends. We were poring over the technical details […]
READ ONDude, where’s my lactose? II
A couple of emails over the weekend from readers who asked that I clarify the fact that yogurt is not 100% lactose free. Indeed that’s true. The most you can say about yogurt is that, like cheese, it’s a dairy product in which the lactose has been drastically reduced (usually by half, frequently by 60% […]
READ ONDude, where’s my lactose?
Those who looked at the previous post carefully may have found themselves wondering: Well now if the bacteria eat most of the lactose in the milk, does that mean people who are lactose intolerant can eat yogurt? Why yes it does. And in fact most people who are lactose intolerant do indulge freely in it. […]
READ ONMaking Yogurt Step Four: Fermentation
This is where the fun happens, at least for me. The milk is 120 or so degrees and the starter (room-temperature commercial yogurt) goes in. The cooler starter brings the temperature of the milk down to about 115 degrees Fahrenheit, at which point the lactic acid bacteria start gorging themselves. Seizing the closest available lactose […]
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