I had another go at making yoghurt, but alas with less success. This time I put in a bit more of the starter culture, using my last attempt at yoghurt rather than a bought pot. I also kept the milk a bit hotter than before - apparently the temperature is all important because yoghurt bacteria don’t like much above or below 50 degrees centigrade (it goes without saying that I don’t have a thermometer for kitchen use, so instead I just stuck my finger in). Whatever I changed, I shouldn’t have. It still was definitely yoghurt (so thumbs up to my DIY starter culture), but it had separated into curds and whey. I tried mixing it back together, but it still had a grainy, cottage-cheese-like texture of curds, but without actually being nice. Back to the drawing board with the yoghurt.
Research has suggested that I may have left it too long (for which I blame the Saturday morning lie-in), or that the proto-yoghurt may have been too hot when I put it in the Thermos. Perhaps I should invest in a thermometer. I'm thinking a trip to the cookware shop is necessary in any case to track down some muslin so that I can strain my next attempt at yoghurt. The only snag in this otherwise simple plan is that Cambridge is the type of place where the only purveyor of such goodies is Lakeland, meaning that everything is good quality but costs about four times as much as I think I should pay for it. I may have lived in Cambridge (pop. over 100,000) for nearly six years, but I've never quite got used to the fact that household items are both more widely and more cheaply available in my parent's rural market town (pop. 4000). Bloody southerners.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I've also been making yoghurt with mixed success rates. I always strain yoghurt because I like the thickness of greek yoghurt, which is strained. You don't need to get a proper straining cloth (although various cookshops online cookshops have jelly bags for about £2) - you can use a tea towel, or a hanky, or I went to a shop and just looked for some plain cotton with a slightly loose mesh and used that, and it was very successful. If your yoghurt curdles, don't try to make yoghurt out of it, make cheese instead! This page is really useful: http://biology.clc.uc.edu/fankhauser/Cheese/Ricotta/RICOTTA_00.HTM
Essentially, once you've separated out the curds and whey, drain the curds to make curd cheese and then make ricotta out of the whey. Both are delicious (this happened out of an accident for me, but it was a good accident...).
The other thing I found is that you really do have to make sure that the yoghurt culture you add to the milk is at room temperature or slightly warmed - the best thing is probably to add some of the warmed and then cooled milk to the yoghurt culture before you mix it in or it doesn't work properly. I am going to get a thermometer - have discovered them quite cheaply on amazon and on www.pots-and-pans.co.uk but reckon you could use a regular thermometer if you have one once the milk has cooled a bit, since 45C seems to be about the optimum temperature for adding yoghurt culture.
Love your blog, by the way, I'll be adding things about yoghurt, cheese and sourdough bread to mine when I get time, since I seem to have been having much the same ideas as you - although I don't have any sort of garden at all, just a small jungle of herbs on my desk...
Wow, that's way too long, sorry. Hope at least some of it's helpful though. :o)
Post a Comment