How to make your own natural yogurt (yoghurt)

I learnt how to make yoghurt the 'no fuss' way while I was staying with my husband's family in Turkey. His mother made a large pan of natural yoghurt effortlessly and without any special pots, machines or equipment at all, so this is a huge money-saver all round! Here at Les Trois Chenes Guest House, I like to make my own yoghurt to serve at breakfast and many of my guests love to eat it with crunchy cerials and muesli, or just by itself in a bowl. This would normally be a very short article as it is so very easy to do, so I shall give you a little flavour of our life here as well as a step-by-step guide to making your own yoghurt.

Yoghurt is a product produced by bacterial fermentation of milk and cultures of Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus and Streptococcus salivarius subsp. thermophilus bacteria are normally used. This thickens the milk and gives it a special taste; indeed the word Yogurt itself is derived from the Turkish word yoğurt and is related to the word yoğun meaning "dense" or "thick"

You need only look at the many television adverts promoting active yoghurt as a means to improving the health of your digestive system to realise that the health-giving properties of live yoghurt is VERY big business.

It is generally acknowleged that live yoghurt can protect from diarrhoeal diseases and aid the immune system. Many studies show positive effects of live yoghurt on immune responses and it has also been suggested that live yoghurts can suppress the growth of the bacterium H. Pylori, and so have a role to play in the management of conditions such as peptic ulcer and possibly gastric cancer.¹

Different strains of bacteria, however, may have different health benefits, so there is much to learn about yoghurt and health. I like to think that this delicious product is good for my bones (a source of calcium) and probably good for a few other things!

Interestingly though, when I first tried to make yoghurt in France, I chose a well-known brand name and it barely worked at all. I put this down to a low count of active bacteria, so I would be very dubious about choosing some of the best know brand names if I was hoping to improve my health. Changing tack, I bought my next pot of live youghurt from a local dairy farm, Ferme de Jabernac at Lésignac Durand, and this time fared much better, and produced a lovely, fairly firm and creamy yogurt with a nice, mild taste. Remember that you should try several yogurts as they are made with different cultures until you find one that suits you.

Cultured milk products have been made as food for at least 4,500 years. The earliest yoghurts were probably spontaneously fermented by wild bacteria Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus.

Pliny the Elder wrote that barbarian tribes knew how to thicken the milk into a substance with an agreeable acidity and the use of yoghurt by nomadic medieval Turks is recorded in the books in the 11th century.

There is a story that Francis the 1^st of France had diarrhea which was cured by Suleiman the Magnificent of Turkey by sending a doctor who gave him yoghurt.

Until the 1900s, yoghurt was a staple food of people in the Russian Empire, Asia, Eastern and Central Europe and India.

It was Isaac Carasso who industrialized the production of yoghurt. In 1919, Carasso, started a small yoghurt business in Barcelona and named the business Danone, meaning ‘little Daniel’, after his son. The brand later expanded to the United States under an Americanised version of the name: Dannon, however the first yoghurt to be made in the US was made in the Colombo and Sons Creamery in Andover, Massachusetts in 1929.

Yoghurt with added fruit jam was patented in 1933 by the Radlická Mlékárna dairy in Prague and it was introduced to the United States in 1947, by Dannon.²

A farm from times gone by, but with a nice shop that sells local produce to local people.

This dairy farm sells absolutely fresh, unpasturised milk directly to the public and I buy two or three litres to make the yogurt. This milk must be boiled and then simmered to kill the bacteria in the milk so that you are sure not to cultivate the wrong cultures!

• Bring the milk to the boil and simmer gently for 10 minutes, in order to kill the germs. (In these illustrations I used about 1.5 litres of milk and half a 125g pot of plain, live yogurt.
• Cover and let the milk stand until it reaches blood temperature. Dip your CLEAN little finger in - it should be nice and warm like a bath.
  
• For 1 - 2 litres of milk I use half to a whole standard pot of yoghurt.
• Take some of the warm milk and stir it into the yoghurt so that the yoghurt will be easier to distribute evenly in the milk.
• Then stir in the yoghurt with a clean spoon (you can put it into boiling water if you like).
• Cover the pan quickly to avoid bacteria from the air getting in.
• Wrap up the pan warmly. I use a clean tea towel, then two of my son's winter jackets! The aim is to keep the yoghurt at this temperature for as long as possible.
• Put in a warm place overnight. I put mine next to the central heating boiler, but if you have an airing cupboard that would be ideal. Do the best you can.
• Next morning you should have delicious yogurt. There will be a little clear liquid on top which you can drain off if you like.
• Then Î put the whole pan into the fridge where it will keep for several, if not many days and use as I need it.
  

Simply add fresh fruit or stewed fruit with sugar to taste. I collected raspberries and blackcurrants and just crushed them with a potato masher. I added a little of our home produced honey but sugar would be fine. I finished off the dessert by putting it into a glass and topping with fresh raspberries and blackcurrants and a lemon balm leaf and then dusted it with white sugar. It was gorgeous.