Yogurt Saga, Chapter 1

I used to think Yogurt meant Yoplait.  Plain yogurt was something "crazy health nuts" or "people who really like super-sour stuff" ate, and it had no place in my fridge as a child!  My grandpa tells a story about his college roommate from Albania who cultured yogurt under his bed in their dorm room!  According to said roommate, "Yogurt never goes bad, it just gets better and better with time."  That sounded pretty far out there to my Standard American Diet family, along the same lines as KimChi (rotten cabbage?) and sauerkraut (same reaction).

There was no appreciation for the lovely distinction between fermentation and rot.

Well, I've come a long way in my understanding of beneficial bacteria since then!  After digging into Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon Morell, we started eating plain yogurt as well as experimenting with sauerkraut, lacto-fermented dill pickles, and homemade fermented ginger-ale.  But making my own yogurt?  Scary!  Would I have to grow it under my bed?  

I have tried traditional yogurt recipes a few times, with the milk-scalding, cooling, adding of commercial yogurt, and then incubating in a warm place overnight.  It has kind of worked.  My house is cool, my oven doesn't have a pilot light that I can leave on, and my "incubated" yogurt has always turned out a little suspiciously stringy.  Not sure if that is okay or not.

Anyway, last week, I read an idea that revolutionized my life!!  Well, my yogurt-making life.  Laurie from Common Sense Homesteading described her Fermenting Sock that she uses to help keep her Villi yogurt warm in her cool house.  Huh.  Villi yogurt?  What's that?  Welp, a little trip over to Cultures for Health taught me that it's a type of yogurt that can be cultured at room temperature!  Room temperature!  No stressing over my oven temperature!  No expensive yogurt maker!  No keeping my yogurt in a cooler of hot water overnight (which is a good idea, I guess, but I can't leave it on the floor with my kiddos around, and I don't have any counterspace to spare for a cooler).  

One packet of Villi yogurt culture?  Sold!

Now, apparently, you're supposed to use pasteurized milk to revive the culture.  I plan to exclusively use pasteurized milk to make the yogurt, because the raw stuff is prohibitively expensive and I want to save it for drinking!  But we seem to be all out.  I am not willing to sacrifice my "good" milk for a yogurt experiment, so I will go get some dead milk at the grocery store and try to bring it back to life. 

Will the initial yogurt culture succeed?  Will I become a yogurt-making diva?  Or will I fall flat on my yogurt-making face?  Find out in the next exciting chapter of the Yogurt Saga!  (I know, I'm excited too!)

Want to know how the yogurt-making is progressing?  Check out the Yogurt Saga, Chapter 2!

This post is shared at Monday Mania at The Healthy Home Economist, Hearth and Soul, and Real Food Wednesday at Kelly the Kitchen Kop