COMING OUT TO MUFFIN

Our first fermented dairy project: HOMEMADE YOGURT! Made with raw milk from neighborhood favorite Livewater Farm. I followed the recipe from Sally Fallon’s “Nourishing Traditions”. It was super easy: the basic idea is to add yogurt that is already yogurt (we used Butterworks Farm’s jersey milk yogurt) to “gently heated” milk as a culture, then let it stand in a warm place (we wrapped the half-gallon jar in towels and put it in a cooler in front of a heating vent) for several hours to let those bacteria do their thing. I think I let it stand too long (12 hours) before straining, causing it to be a bit… grainy when it came out, but I mixed it up and then it was fine. I think next time I’ll strain it after more like 6 or 8 hours.

I like really thick, Greek-style yogurt so I strained it through cheesecloth for quite a while and then squuuuuueeeeezed it, which produced really cool looking “sweat beads” of whey on the outside of the cloth. I think it’s delicious. We ate it with honey and fleur de sel—highly recommend this combo. Liz put jelly on hers this morning - also very good. I saved the whey which is good for lots of stuff, from lacto-fermenting (add it to yr sauerkraut!) to simply drinking for a nice little probiotic boost (Liz thinks this is disgusting, but I like it!). I am REAL psyched to knock this off my “to-try” list, and expect to be making lots more yogurt very soon!