I’ve really enjoyed this journey of founding Kleynhuis and bringing my little strainer pouch invention to market but one of the unexpected things I’ve loved is making connections with passionate yogurt makers all over the world! Some contact me hoping for a way to purchase my product from another country and others with questions on best yogurt-making practices. One of the recent connections I made was with Sabrina. We were instantly fans of each other’s products!
While I’ve been a long-time fan of making my own yogurt, I’m always ready to learn something new. In the past, I pretty much had used store-purchased yogurt as my starter for each batch of yogurt. Sabrina turned me on to the world of heirloom yogurt. Her passion to introduce more probiotics into her family’s food, snowballed into making a wide variety of cultures available through her online store, Positively Probiotic.
Just today, I tried Positively Probiotic’s Buttermilk Style yogurt starter for my fresh batch of yogurt and was amazed at the difference in flavor between the store-purchased, high-end grass-fed yogurt I also purchased to compare it to. My homemade Buttermilk Style yogurt was so mild and delicate as opposed to the very bright and tart taste of the yogurt I had purchased. I’m learning that the starter you use to make your yogurt, greatly changes the taste results. Whether you like tart or mild, or enjoy mixing it up, trying different yogurt starters will transform your yogurt-making!
When you order Sabrina’s dried yogurt starters, they come beautiful packaged in tiny little pouches. I had never worked with dried yogurt starters before, but the dried starters will keep in your freezer for 6 months and you just need to activate the starter by soaking it in warm milk. Straining the reconstituted starter before adding it to your gallon of milk will help your first batch of yogurt to not be grainy, since the starter does not completely liquefy.
But once you make your first batch of yogurt using that starter, freeze 4 tablespoons of the fresh yogurt in ice cube trays or another small plastic container, mark and store in a freezer bag and you’ll have your starter for the next time. My freezer is now stocked with three different yogurt-starter varieties. My favorite so far has been the Buttermilk Style, followed by the Mild Greek. Your first batch of yogurt may be slightly thin or not quite as flavorful. This is to be expected. The taste and consistency will improve over the next several batches as the bacteria come out of hibernation.
Thanks, Sabrina, for your ingenuity and passion to make heirloom yogurt starters so easily accessible! Check out positivelyprobiotic.com and you will literally find over 30 different heirloom yogurt starters to choose from! You can also easily order her cultures from Amazon! I hope you enjoy them as much as I have!
