reid@decwrl.UUCP (Brian Reid) (02/16/84)
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Yogurt is best made in largish batches. Now that I live with just my wife
and infant daughter I buy Dannon plain at the store. But when I was a
student (many years) I always lived in group houses and it was practical to
make yogurt.
I have done a LOT of experimenting with yogurt-making technology. My own
personal favorite sort of yogurt is the kind you get in Syrian/Lebanese
or Armenian restaurants. It is extremely tart, quite thick, and fairly
fresh-tasting.
In growing yogurt, the variables are the amount of fat in the milk, the
amount of lactose in the milk, the temperature at which it grows (I always
use the verb "to yogue" to describe this process of growing), the length of
time that it grows, the nature of the starter culture, and the amount of the
starter culture that you put in.
To make my kind of yogurt I use only dry powdered milk, mixed about 4/3 as
strong as the manufacturer intends. I heat it to 106 degrees, then I take a
kitchen spoon, dip it in my starter culture, pull it out vertically so that
a little bit of the starter adheres to the spoon, then dip the spoon in the
warm milk mixture and stir until the starter washes off. I then yogue it at
100 degrees or so for 12 hours, with the lid on. I then take the lid off the
pan, pour out the water accumulated on top, and lay a clean cotton dishcloth
(paper towels actually work just as well) across the top of the yogurt so
that the edges of the dishcloth fall down the 2 sides of the pan. I then
take this whole assembly, put it on a large plate, and put it in the
refrigerator for 24 hours. The cotton dishcloth wicks the moisture out of
the yogurt and deposits it on the plate; after 24 hours I carefully lift the
whole thing out of the refrigerator, dump the liquid out of the plate, and
package the yogurt in small containers.
This makes the most delightfully tart, clean, fresh yogurt you can imagine.
Some people don't like it tart. Some people like it creamier. If you want
the yogurt to be less tart, then use a larger amount of starter culture and
yogue it at a higher temperature (up to about 110). If you want it to be
creamier, then use a higher fat content in the milk. If you use any whole
milk, you must of course scald the whole milk and then cool it back down to
110 to 115 degrees so it won't kill the yogurt beasties when you stir them
in.
If you want a Swiss-style yogurt (like Borden's, for example) then stir
some gelatin into the milk when you are scalding it, and dilute it with a
little water. Use about 1 part water to 6 parts milk, and add to that water
about 3 times the amount of gelatin needed to gel it (read the label).
To make something like Yoplait, water down whole milk very slightly (1 part
in 8) and add a teeny tiny amount of sugar to it (1/2 teaspoon sugar to a
half gallon of milk) and yogue it at a fairly hot temperature (maybe 110)
for about 5 hours. Also make sure you use a young starter culture. Add about
1 tablespoon of culture per half gallon. The sugar is food for the yogurt
beasties, and you have to make sure you yogue it long enough for them to eat
all of it. If your yogurt is too sweet you will know that you didn't yogue
it long enough.
If you want to make a yogurt that is thick but not gelatinous and is also
not overly tart, such as Alta-Dena, then use moderate milkfat (50-50 mixture
of powdered milk and lowfat milk), moderately high temperature (107 or so),
a hefty chunk of starter culture (4 tablespoons of starter for half a gallon
of yogurt) and then use the dishcloth technique (above) for getting some of
the leftover moisture out of it. If it is too tart then raise the
temperature next time.
If you are a fanatic about yogurt then you will have several different
starter cultures in your refrigerator. Each time you make a batch of yogurt,
you can save some of it to be a new starter, but the flavor will change with
each generation. Nth-generation cultures tend to be tarter, and have a
somewhat more metallic taste, than first-generation cultures. When I was
experimenting I started with various commercial cultures and with samples
from Lebanese restaurants, and kept 8-ounce containers of 1st- through 5th-
generation starters, so that I could play with the mixtures. I found that my
favorite yogurt came from 3rd-generation Dannon, A starter culture will last
about 3 months in the fridge, and even if it gets greeen things growing on
it you can just scrape them off and use the yogurt underneath. You can also
freeze it, but that definitely changes the flavor (softens it considerably).
The best yogurt-making heater I know of is sold by General Nutrition Stores
(The vitamin pill chain) for about $15. They sell it along with 6 little
yogurt-making dishes, which I threw away (big batches are better than little
ones for some reason). It is a foot-square wooden plate with a plastic top
and 8 Christmas-tree light bulbs inside, connected in series pairs so each
runs at 60 volts. I put the metal bowl of yogurt on top of the heater, then
throw a big towel over the whole assembly to insulate it, and go to bed (for
some reason I always make yogurt at night) I found I was able to regulate
the temperature very satisfactorily by the amount of insulation I put over
it.
Yum. Just thinking about it makes me hungry. Think I'll go have a Dannon. I
wonder what my wife will do if she comes home from her choir practice and
finds 2 gallons of yogurt brewing away on the countertop.......
[Maybe I will post another article some other time telling you what I do with
mass quantities of yogurt, in cooking. It's amazingly versatile.]
Brian Reid
Stanford University Reid@SU-Shasta.ARPA
Palo Alto, CA {decwrl,ucbvax,sun}!Shasta!reid
(and DEC Western Research Laboratory) decwrl!reid
Los Altos, CA