Rich and Strange Aeons

So, my previous described batch was pretty much perfect, I realized. Good medium-sour taste, good 'texture', much like the European Yogurt that it starts from. Can I replicate it?

I tried batch 3 just now, and the answer is "not quite". The taste is fine, but it's a bit firmer: it can actually hold some shape.

I made it the same way: add milk from the fridge to the jar containing the dregs of the previous batch, shake[1], stick in oven for maybe 18 hours.

Pickiness of texture aside, it certainly tastes good; I ate like 1/3 of it straight away before stopping.

[1] I've read you shouldn't stir the incubating yogurt, that the bacteria don't like being disturbed. (How can they tell? They're so small!) But I can't avoid the feeling that it's better to disperse the starter, rather than letting it grow up from the bottom and walls. I suppose I could test not shaking it, sometime.

I've been buying butter in small tubs, so I can leave it out to get soft, and not mess with sticks in a tray. I'd been buying Plugra. Last time I bought Kerrygold, and after leaving it out it was practically turning into butter soup, in temperatures not as hot as they had been. It claims to be naturally softer, because it's from grass fed cows. It doesn't say that grass means more Omega-3 fats, but that's usually the case, and O-3s have lower melting points than O-6 (maybe why deep sex fish use them.) So, that checks out. And O-3 would mean marginally healthier butter.

Question remains whether it's "naturally softer" enough to not be annoying to spread straight out of the fridge.

***

Yogurt making continues, and my latest batch is like the best-set I've ever made. I went for maximum laziness, simply filling the mason jar with milk and sticking that in the oven (heated by pilot light); no pre-heating of milk, no heating of the oven to get the temperature above 106 F. I did add a bit of yogurt from the Trader Joe's tub, in addition to the yogurt already in the jar. I left it incubating for a while, 13 or 15 hours, I think. Came out not very sour, and a mix of semi-solid and stretchy-goopy, vs. my more common "solid on top, fermented liquid beneath" or the "totally separated curds and sour whey" of previous late-generation attempts. I am pleased, if unsure about being able to replicate this.

***

I re-read the webcomic Digger for the first time, a couple days ago. It really is good! Serious story but also hilarious in many places. Pseudoniece G' seems to be liking it, too.

***

I re-read the webcomic Treading Ground last night, for the second or third time. Much quicker, only 251 strips, vs like 750 pages. It's a lot cruder and I'm not mentioning it to 13 year old pseudonieces. But funny in its own way. It also had advice on cutting meat with dull knives (apply pressure and speed) which has served me well since first reading it.

Yogurt seems to be 4x or more the price of an equivalent quantity of milk, so some years ago I experimented in making my own: heating up milk, letting it cool, putting it in a Mason jar with some culture, burying it a nest of plastic bags (for insulation) for 8-12 hours. It worked decently once I got used to how runny it was... a precursor to the European Style Yogurt I now regularly get from Trader Joe's.

I decided to get into it again. Problems: the Mason jar is only 32 ounces, and while I have lots of bags and lots of boxes, I don't the same convenient nest. Could make one probably... but I wanted larger batches anyway. So at first I dropped some culture into a gallon of milk and was going to let it sit on the counter. But after a bit of research I decided the world probably meant it when they said yogurt is thermophilic, so I poured off a lot into a pot and warmed that up. Not the usual way, to 180 F to then cool, which aims at altering the proteins; just enough to get the culture going. Then I let the pot sit on the stove, figuring the pilot lights might keep it warm, but that didn't seem entirely the case, so I added more heat periodically.

End result: something between yogurt and cottage cheese, as it curdled somewhat. Don't know the cause: could be the high heat at the bottom from the gas flame, could be the acid from the yogurt, or having stirred it, or all three. I don't actually mind it, and it's drinkable. But next time I might try putting it in the stove and let the pilot light there combine with the walls to keep it toasty, and also not disturb it.

I also did some research, and found that ayran = lassi = yogurt + water + whatever flavoring you want (salt, sugar, none works for me, etc.) TJ European yogurt + water comes out very much like such drinks.

There are also milk fermenters that *are* mesophilic, growing well at room temperature: matsony, viili, piima, filmjolk. I wonder if anywhere local sells cultures, or I'll have to order them. Kefir and kumis are also room temoperature, but are a mix of bacteria and yeast (thus providing the alcohol that kumis is noted for) -- a very weird mix in kefir's case, cauliflower-like kefir grains that reproduce in the milk. But it got me wondering what happens if you add baking yeast to milk... the experiment has not yet been attempted.