Probiotics What?! - Sous Vide Yogurt

Super cool way to make yogurt!  If you have a sous vide device, of course... 

I mean, who needs probiotics if you actually know what they are? If you eat yogurt at all, or naturally fermented pickles or sauerkraut or any cultured foods, you are getting probiotics in a totally natural way. And yes, that includes yogurt!

I love making homemade yogurt and as you may have guessed from some of my previous posts, I am especially fond of gadgets and cooking tools.

I've used several yogurt making tools in the past but when I moved to Florida, the bottom heating element of my favorite yogurt maker got lost somehow in the move.

No big deal, I thought. As I have my YoLife non electric thermos yogurt maker, I knew I wouldn't really have to do without. My Euro Cuisine yogurt maker was great, but still... just couldn't quite find it justifiable to buy another uni-purpose kitchen tool. Getting more practical in my culinary old age and even more particular when it comes to storing bulky tools in my limited kitchen space. Let's face it, no matter how big your kitchen is, if you love to cook, your space is always limited.

When it comes to making good quality yogurt, it is as simple as this: you must start with good quality yogurt and good quality whole milk. No way around it. And therein lies it's most rewarding feature. You can use virtually ANY good quality yogurt you like as long as it has active yogurt cultures. In fact, reading a label should be quick because it should really only have one ingredient: cultured dairy. Cultured dairy is actually comprised of two ingredients. Dairy (milk or cream) and live active cultures. Often, the active cultures will be explicitly labeled as well.

When choosing yogurt as a starter, I'm a purist in this regard. Not to mention, I'm not a fan of artificial anything... not a fan of preservatives, additives to alter coloring or artificial flavorings of any kind. But that is a personal preference to be sure. I suppose it bears mentioning though, that if you want the benefits of probiotics you need to dispense with the artificial sugars, additives and preservatives, etc. Defeats the purposes of probiotics in the diet, which is to course correct the over indulgence all of us have for processed foods containing sugars and all the bad juju associated with today's modern illnesses, including obesity. Do your gut a favor and go as natural as you can, from time to time.

For the sake of this blog post, I am referring to dairy yogurts made from milk.  I have made other types of non-dairy yogurt for the paleos out there, but really, my heart always comes back to whole milk yogurts.

If your yogurt contains additives or preservatives or flavorings or gelatins or thickening agents like guar gum, etc. just leave it on the shelf... It won't produce a clone of the original product no matter what you do and you may be inclined to think it is harder than it really is or that you've done something wrong.  Trust me on this, you haven't done anything wrong. But for the sake of replicating your favorite yogurt, your yogurt choice matters. After all, who can replicate unnatural manufactured yogurt with an indefinite shelf life? Yogurt is a fresh product and the fewer, natural ingredients involved, the more likely you are to replicate it to perfection... Yogurt is alive. You know you have the right one if it contains 2-3 natural dairy ingredients and ACTIVE or LIVE cultures.

In order to replicate yogurt indefinitely, you need to think of it the same way as you think of other cultured and fermented products. Cultured products need to be fed. Like sourdough... If you've ever worked with sourdough starters, the concept is exactly the same. The culture or starter needs to be fed regularly in order to multiply and culture the newly added fresh ingredients. You add more flour and water to a sourdough starter and the starter feeds on the fresh ingredients, culturing the new ingredients to make more sourdough. If done well, the cultures can live almost indefinitely.

The way this works in yogurt is much the same way.  You take a starter yogurt, such as Dannon whole fat plain yogurt, add fresh whole milk to this and leave it for 12-24 hours to culture the new milk.  That's it.

Well, almost.  The reason there is no finite time is that everyone's environment and kitchen temperature is different. In days of old, yogurt was made by heating yogurt in a thick vessel designed to retain the heat and then left overnight or up to a day to culture.

The reason for this, and I won't go into extraordinary detail (or I guess I already have :) is because yogurt is a mesophilic culture. What does that mean??? Well, it means it cultures at a medium temperature range, which means a yogurt culture must be kept at 110 degrees during the culturing process.

That is what these high priced and lower end yogurt makers do... they maintain a constant temperature for the culturing yogurt. Nothing more or less. If you want to make a lot of yogurt, you need a big vessel or large yogurt making appliance. If you do just a pint at a time, a smaller tool will do the trick or you can do it the old fashioned way as well.

BUT... if you have a sous vide device, you can do so much more than just make yogurt!! Not only can you make incredible steaks, soups, eggs, sauces, fish, etc... but you can make as little or as much yogurt as you want!

Here's what you need:
Fresh cultured whole fat plain yogurt
Fresh whole fat milk
Sous vide device (110 degrees F, 12 hours)
Jar or glass container with a fitted lid

There is no special ratio of yogurt to milk, or maybe there is, but in my experience it is very forgiving. What is important is to have active live cultures in your yogurt and fresh whole milk. You can absolutely use percent or low fat or skim milk, but to make your new starter, I recommend whole milk. It makes a thicker, luscious product that sets up so nicely. But do what you must.... I'm never one to stick with the rules either. :)

As a guide:
1-2 tbsp yogurt to 1 cup of milk

Or for someone that doesn't mess around:
1-2 cups yogurt to 1 half gallon (64 oz) of milk

Now if those ratios don't quite equal each other, I send love and apologies as the Pioneer woman likes to say. I send love and apologies to her for stealing that line because I love it so much.

I use whatever vessel I'm going to use to store it in to finish the process. To me, that is absolutely a large 1/2 gallon mason jar from Amazon. (These work beautifully for the broccoli and cauliflower soups as well as the Oyster stew my Florida boy loves to make.) I also have a vacuum sealer with the jar attachment that I use to seal the jars prior to putting in the sous vide water bath. But hey, if you know you will be eating it right away, why bother vacuum sealing it, right? Me, I will make a couple of these at a time.

Method:
Add your yogurt culture to the jar, followed by the milk and shake with the lid on or stir very well to incorporate the yogurt with the milk. If you see yogurt settling on the bottom of the jar, keep going. You want it well distributed.

Sous-viding (yep just made that up!):
Start your large sous vide bath and set the timer for 12 hours with a temp of 110 degrees F. At a constant, precision controlled temperature, you can almost certainly reproduce consistent results in a consistent time frame if you ensure that you started with enough cultured yogurt for the amount of milk you use. In this case, overachieving is better than underachieving and by that I mean, when in doubt, use more yogurt in your ratio than using less. You won't hurt it by using too much but it may take longer to culture if you use too little. How do you know? Well, it will set up and look fairly solid, not liquid-y. And you will see it jiggle in the jar. So scientific, huh? Haha.

Yogurt styles:
Do it a few times and you will get the hang of it.  And guess what? If you like Greek yogurt, start with Greek yogurt. Just follow the guideline I provided: whole fat plain Greek yogurt, no additives or preservatives of any kind, including sugars or sweeteners. Greek yogurts are a different culture than say, American style yogurts. If you like Lebanese yogurt, use that. Indian yogurt? Use that. Use what you love as long as it fits the bill.

Yogurt Flavoring:
And if you want a Greek honey yogurt or flavoring of any kind, just wait until you make the yogurt and it is refrigerated.  This is the finished product. You can flavor the finished product with whatever in the world floats your boat. Fruit or berries, sweeteners like honey or agave or organic sugars or you can even do savory flavorings.... Can you say Tzatziki? Neither can I but I sure do love Tzatziki.

**And just in case you weren't sure, yes, you do need to refrigerate your yogurt once you are done.

Homemade Pizza

This year, I have obsessed a little with cultured foods. Cultured foods haven't gone to college or studied abroad or married a foreigner...  They are just super healthy foods that have natural probiotics, or the healthy bacteria your gut needs in order to fight off illness or infection.

Most of us are familiar with probiotics in dairy products, especially, cultured dairy we have grown up with our whole lives such as yogurt, sour cream, butter, cheese and buttermilk. What we probably didn't know until recently is what made these dairy foods good for us, such as the probiotics they contain because of the fermentation process they undergo when these products are produced. Probiotics was a term I was unfamiliar with until several years ago when the vitamin supplement companies started touting probiotics as a way of healing a digestive track that was a bit off track.

Now, I see this term everywhere and know what it means and what it can do.  It can make a really bad tummy and digestive system right again. Even if you know this, you may not know that all cultured foods have this ability, not just dairy.  If you are lactose intolerant, don't fret.  There are loads of other foods you can consume with these same wonderful and natural side effects such as, yes, you guessed it, pizza!  How you say?  Let's identify some cultured and fermented products we know and love: pizza, beer, sourdough bread, kombucha, sauerkraut, kimchi,  pickles of all kinds, sake and of course, most of the dairy products we have already mentioned.  

The important part of the pickle equation, however, is that they are naturally fermented pickles. This means that the American pickles which are processed using vinegar, are not exactly the kind of pickles that are good for you, although they are not bad, they just don't have the healthy probiotics which come from the natural fermentation process used in making old fashioned pickles. The Germans and many of the Asian cultures still ferment vegetables the old fashioned way and that is the style that is quickly making a comeback, both for health reasons and of course, for the very fact that it is an excellent way of preserving your summer crops for winter eating. It is not only healthy, it's practical. It's green!  Make your own and not only will you be blown away at how much better a naturally fermented pickle is but you will giggle at how easy it is to do once you know how.

For today, though, I thought I'd introduce you to another fermented and cultured product that most Americans adore in um, large quantities. :)  Pizza. The simplest way to explain how pizza IS good for you is to talk about it in terms of sour dough bread.  This pizza is made with an Italian Pizza culture I bought from Cultures for Health.  I buy all my cheese and sourdough cultures there and have found them to be easy to follow, as well as very educational with videos, recipes, etc.  They make learning about this way of preparing healthy food really fun.  But being that this is still a cultured food, it means that some of the sugars in the flour are already broken down into a form the body can more easily digest and of course, they are also loaded with the beneficial bacteria your body needs for long term healthy digestion and natural immunity.  

Try, then trust and as always, do your own research and self-validation, like I like to do.  Sourdoughs are also supposed to help people with gluten intolerance who really miss their breads.  Couple this with the best and freshest flour you can find and you might just see gluten intolerance disappear all together, but that is for you to explore and I wish you all the best.

To make the pizza culture:
A packet of Italian Calmodoli sour dough starter (or fresh if you have this going already)
1/4 c lukewarm water
1/4 c flour
Large quart mason jar or other wide mouth jar (NO METAL TOP, very important)
Clean coffee filter and rubber band for sealing the jar to allow gases to escape and to keep out critters. 

**Metal tops will rust and are generally bad when fermenting food as the acids can essentially eat the metal which is simply put, bad eats.

Care and Feeding:
That's it. Use a large glass quart jar to get it started and feed your starter once or twice a day with 1/2 c water, 1/2 c flour.  When the starter is happy, it bubbles and grows or rises. You can see it. If you forget to feed it, a shallow film of liquid will pool on top. Not to worry, just pour this off and continue to feed. If you forget to feed it for a long while, you may need to start over if the film is green, white or moldy. I won't go into the education behind sour dough starter, but if you have questions, let me know and of course, check out Cultures for Health, a wealth of information. I'm a student, too. :)

Pizza Party:
This recipe is a work in progress but how I did this one...

• Liquids = sourdough starter, equal part water (if you have 3/4 quart of starter, use 3/4 quart of water)
• Flour = Double the amount of liquids above (if you have 1 1/2 quart of liquids above use 3 quarts of flour)
• 1/2-1 tablespoon of instant yeast (optional)
• 1 1/2 tablespoons of salt

Mix it however you normally would. I use my Kitchenaid mixer and once it comes together, I put it in my proofing container and let it double.  The yeast is optional. Why? Because natural sourdough will rise if given enough time. However, most people don't want to wait 6 hours for bread to rise. If you have time, try it at least once.  I personally, need to control the rise and timing, so I use yeast... I know, sacrilege, but seriously, it is up to you.

Once it has doubled in size, the dough is ready for shaping and it's final rise. I divide the dough into balls, depending on whether I want large or small pizzas and then roll them on a floured surfaces to the desired shape and size. If you like sheet pan pizza, do that. If you like round, do that.  

My favorite pizza pan is an old perforated (yep it has little holes in it), round 12" pizza pan that arrived in my house from a delivery pizza that was so hastily boxed that the pizza dude left the pan right on the pizza. We haven't had delivery pizza in like 15 years, but this pan is a keeper. I use that pan all the time and recently bought one for my niece. What is special? I don't know exactly. But if you grease the pan or forget, the crust never sticks to this pan. It isn't a non stick pan, it is just some aluminum cheap pan that looks well used. I grease it just in case and the crust is crispy and perfect.  Mine looks a little like this one.

Baking:
450 degrees 12-17 minutes, depends on oven and whether you like a semi-burnt cheese or just gooey. I like mine a little crispified.

One last tip: I prebake my crust for about 5-7 minutes on 450 degrees.  THEN, I add the sauce, cheese, etc. You don't want to overload the pizza with cheese and toppings or maybe you do. I just find that with thin crust pizzas, less is more and with Chicago or deep dish style pizzas more is usually expected. It all depends on what "load" your crust can handle so experimentation as always, is my best recommendation.

*Please comment!  I am learning, too, and would love to know how this works for you or if you find some helpful tips to share, I will be happy to include them here.  Thanks!