We can haz yogurt.

[sleigh]

While critiquing essays for Monday's class (well, what will hopefully be Monday's class if the snow here doesn't cancel it), I also made yogurt (which Denise's family calls "laban"). We have an active culture that goes back three generations in her family to Syria, so when we get down to the last few jars, we have to make a new batch so we don't lose the culture.

Heat up a couple gallons of whole milk to 180 degrees, pour it into ten or so Mason jars, let it sit until the temp's somewhere between 115 and 120, stir in three or four tablespoons of the last batch into each jar, cover the jars and let them sit huddled together somewhere warm and dark.

Then about eight hours or so later, we look and see if we have yogurt! Which we should.

Comments

[maiac.livejournal.com]

Three generations. That's wonderful.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Then about eight hours or so later, we look and see if we have yogurt! Which we should.

Have you ever looked and found that no, you don't have yogurt? Is there a failure mode? (I make sourdough bread - a lot - and every now and then the starter just gets sullen and strange for no apparent reason*, and I'm wondering if there's an equivalent in yogurt culture? And if so, what you do about it? We can feed up a sourdough starter and pamper it for a week or two till it's back to full fizz, but I wot not of milky bacteria.)

*and sometimes so do other people's starters, all up and down the peninsula

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

I've not had complete failures, but have had less-than-optimal results -- I started out using 2% milk, and that gave us yogurt that was too thin. My brother-in-law once tried using 1% milk and had lousy results. I once had a batch that wasn't as tart as usual, though it was passable (and we used it later to start a much better batch). Then there was the time where some mold must have drifted down into the jars before we put the lids on, and only two of the six jars didn't grow nasty black stuff on top -- that one was the scariest, since if *all* the jars had been infected, we'd have totally lost the starter culture, and since we're the only household within the family regularly making yogurt, that would have been it.

Using whole milk seems to be the key, as is temperature control. If you put the starter spoonfuls in with the milk too hot, it kills all or most of the culture. If you put the starter in with the milk too cold, the culture never activates. Just like the Three Bears, it has to be j-u-s-t right. :-)

Denise and I used to keep some sourdough starter. I remember that it once nearly took over the refrigerator...

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I once took my sourdough starter on a self-catering holiday with a bunch of friends, and fed it before we went to bed and left it out on a warm counter - and woke to find that it had erupted from its jar and spread itself allll over everywhere, in a burst of wild enthusiasm...

So where would I get a live yogurt - or lebneh, as it still is to me - starter, d'you suppose? Lacking a convenient multigenerational family tradition, as I do...?

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

I've heard that some of the un-pastuerized yogurts contain live culture and you can get them to reproduce, though I've never tried that myself.

If you have a Greek or Arab section where you live, you might ask around there.

And if we're ever going to be in the same place at the same time... :-)

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

Very cool!