Yoghurt | Zeb Bakes

We have now made three lots of yoghurt in the new gadget

Lynne kindly sent me some notes on what to do with it :)

I should do some sums and work out how much I have to make before the yoghurt maker pays for itself – actually I can’t be bothered, after all how do I cost the whey which I can use to bake bread? Can’t buy that anywhere locally..

No 1 with easi yo packet plus water to fill up jar ( a litre in all) – this one split into curds and whey. Why? Think it’s not supposed to be made in an electric yoghurt maker but in the easi yo kit. Made some fabulous whey and labneh from it all the same.
No 2 with a litre of UHT full cream milk plus 2 spoons Marvel skimmed milk powder plus 2 teaspoons of live Yeo Valley yoghurt – perfect set but a bit bland. The easiest method as it doesn’t involve heating milk.
No 3 with a litre of fullcream organic milk (heated and left to cool and forgotten about for 6 hours) plus 2 spoons Marvel plus 2 teaspoons of live Yeo Valley yoghurt – a little more whey but a good set

Brian preferred the UHT and I preferred the almost organic one – don’t know if one can buy organic skimmed milk powder somewhere but I will look around.

What I’ve learnt so far….yoghurt making is much easier than making bread…..

Do not use more than two teaspoons of starter yoghurt to a litre of milk, it’s very similar to leaven in that regard. Less is more.
Do not mix it up too much, it doesn’t need it.
Don’t joggle it about while it is setting, it likes to be left alone.

To turn it into yoghurt cheese – labneh – rumoured to be lower in calories than cream cheese – line a sieve with muslin, and let the yoghurt drain through for a day in a cool place. I made little balls of cheese rolled in a mixture of zaartar, salt and pepper – sweet paprika – oregano to go with last night’s supper of salad, fried almonds, and Ottolenghi’s legume and noodle soup from The Guardian.

Eaten for breakfast with honey and hazelnuts and a couple of slices of the legendary delicate milk loaf!

What do you do with your yoghurt?

Over the weekend I made yoghurt – I think I overdid something, I used one of those easi yo packets, and it all separated into curds and whey.

So I drained the curds through a muslin square and was left with a big bowl of golden yellow whey which I stuck in the fridge, remembering that there was something about making bread with it.

I have been reading Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods by Sandor Ellix Katz

Published by Green Books and reviewed by David Whitehouse here which made me curious so I got the book at the weekend. Only part way through it, but very interesting so far…..

Yesterday I found the whey in the fridge and decided I had better use it.

I looked through the Handmade Loaf and based this loaf on Dan Lepard’s white maize and wheat loaf but used wheat and rye flours. I used more whey and less leaven, simply because that is what I had to hand and was worried that the whey might go off if I left it another day while I built up the starter.

100 g white leaven (which had been fed a couple of tsp of the new yoghurt the day before and been refreshed and was a bit over excited and smelt sweetly lactic!)
400g or so of yoghurt whey
350g of very strong white flour
100g of whitewholewheat ( American flour)
50g of rye flour
8g fine sea salt
5g of fresh yeast

I made just over one kilo of dough, which I proved in two oval bannetons. They were quite slow to rise to start with as I mixed them with the whey from the fridge so it was all quite cold. Plus the initial amount of leaven was smaller so I expected it to take its time.

I mixed the dough at 11 am and popped the shaped loaves into bannetons 3.5 hours later. Finally into the oven at 220 C with steam at 6.30 pm.

I lowered the temperature after 15 minutes to 200 C and again to 190 C for the last 15 minutes.

It made a beautiful fragrant loaf with a pale yellow translucent crumb and a dark golden brown crust.