What do you add to your yogurt

Love it! I saved your post to my bookmarks, @mjbnj0001 . TY
.

Speaking of all this, we’ve been traveling so I haven’t made anything with whey in a while.

Bought a quart of buttermilk to make biscuits from scratch (to die for!!!!! Having again tonight!) and needed to use it up, so I used a couple of cups in my chocolate protein pancakes instead of whey. Tasted great, probably didn’t need to thin the batter as much as I did. It was crazy thick with the buttermilk.

Anyway, idly looking up what the heck IS buttermilk and found this from the well respected dietetics folks at our local university:

https://news.uga.edu/dietetics-director-discusses-differences-between-heavy-cream-and-buttermilk/#:~:text=Heavy cream contains 36% fat,it a somewhat tart flavor.

I’m very intrigued that it is fermented and has good probiotics, and may start doing some experiments with buttermilk. Its far fewer calories than whole milk, not that much more than I estimate homemade whey at.

Anybody got any feedback on buttermilk? Tried it as a marinade?

A little natures path pumpkin flax granola and blueberries

mjbnj0001 wrote: »

... I'm thinking 6-8 hours. I probably won't have drained out as much as normal commercial whey extraction, but I am hoping to get enough to make a significant impact on the "hybrid sourdough" bread-baking process. ...

And here's the result after about 7 hrs: it looks as if I got about a full pint of whey and the yogurt came out pretty thick and creamy. The last time I had done this was about 2-3 yrs ago, and I didn't use the weighted plate method. That was a technique I came upon sometime after my last straining, and I'm pretty happy with the results. Now, on to the hybrid sourdough attempt tomorrow ... and Ranch dressing.

springlering62 wrote: »

Go to Amazon’s and check out the euro cuisine yogurt strainer. That thing is the bomb. Leave it overnight and no weights necessary and your weigh is separate and easily decants into a mason jar. Drain, then flip the strainer over onto the lid and give it on sharp bang in the counter and your yogurt, skyr, etc comes out like a jello ring mold.it holds a little over a half gallon of milk plus the extra water I blend in.

The”dense” nylon strainer cleans up like a dream with soap and hot water.

I tried the much larger Hatric (sp) one. Loved the size but the metal strainer was an utter horror to clean. I have them away after the third use.

I also have a small quart size Cuisipro that fits a normal size of Greek yogurt perfectly. I strain it for a couple of days and use it as cream cheese spread or add eggs fruit and sugar free syrup and make a darn good, super low cal cheesecake.

If you need a press, try a tofu press. I made paneer, drained it, and then pressed it in a tofu press. It turned out terrific. Texture was perfect.

Cheesemaking.com has liquid rennet and tons of supplies, videos and recipes.

When we get done traveling I’m going to try to make some of the telemea cheese we enjoyed so much in Romania.

For some reason I really enjoy messing about with milk.

good advice, thanks @springlering62 ! i just went out to cheesemaking.com. i can see some Christmas opportunities there, lol.

cheese - and dairy in general, including yogurt and kefir - is pretty much my kryptonite go-to treat. although cheese is a major weakness and a primary "food group" for me (you'll likely notice some sort of cheese included in many pics out on the "What Do Your Meals Look Like?" thread), i'm lucky in that i keep a very good, low cholesterol (esp. for a 70yo). my wife thinks low cholesterol is my mutant-x superpower. i buy and use full-fat for myself, low or no-fat for her. the last few years i have adopted, "eat good, if not a lot" when buying full-fat dairy, and that probably helps the cholesterol numbers.

the nylon mesh bag i used washed up really well, really fast. i got a much firmer "Greek" yogurt than i expected from my past trials, so it plopped out of the bag fairly well intact, little residue. the bag is from amazon, which i used in doing homemade oat milk trials.

i just finished my bread batch start. i used 6oz of the extracted whey, which by calculations for the two loaves, is more than 2x (approx) the whey load when i added actual yogurt to the dough. so we'll see. i have seen advice that you should keep the liquid whey to 20-30% of the water volume, as it might impact gluten network formation at higher dosages. So, 6oz is a little over the 20%. I'm now entering an 8-9hr countertop 1st rise and will bake later tonight.

"messing about with milk" sounds like a decent hobby, lol. i gotta respect the urge to do cheesemaking. while i was making my own yogurt in the 1970s, i have long since left that behind, except for a few batches during the pandemic. with this current emphasis on whey, i am thinking "ricotta" myself, which would be a new thing. my sister-in-law makes it on occasion.

1. about to mix in the whey, 6oz for two loaves.
2. ready to commence 8hr+ 1st rise on the countertop.

Here are the results of my experiment (as been being reported above).

The solid "Greekified" yogurt became a base for (a) Ranch dressing on a dinner salad, (b) will be thinned to act as a chicken marinade tomorrow (photo will be published over in the "What Do Your Meals Look Like" thread, as I am sure I'm out of the core territory of the OP's question on this thread). Will contemplate other uses for the yogurt solids, but those will be for another day.

The extracted whey went into a batch of bread in an attempt to create "hybrid sourdough" using the bacteria in the whey as well as commercial yeast to simulate sourdough culture. The results were intriguing, tasty and excellent, but alas, not really sourdough. "Whey bread" is its own thing, and I may make it again (and again, LOL). I have some thinking to do about next steps.

Thank you all for your comments and interest. I believe this will be my final new-material posting in this thread.

Photos:
1. "Greekified" yogurt. Since I started with a regular yogurt base (Stoneyfield Whole Milk Plain), this retained the sweetish creamy flavor of the original. I'll have to buy a Stoneyfield Greek to compare, but my grocer stocks only low fat versions. Stoneyfield is a US brand.
2. Making a dressing and marinade base. You can add water, milk, or ... something else. I chose Kefir, which was my backup source material for the whey extraction test. Seems like going in reverse, but I found the result tasty. I also did add a bit of lemon juice.
3. Dressing!
4. Dinner salad using the dressing. Includes crumbled grilled hamburger leftovers for protein. I think the results were very good.
5. Using some whey for the dough. It displaced an equal volume of water. I used 6oz., about 21% of the total liquid. I had heard that higher than 30% can impact gluten network formation. The 6oz is around 2-3x the amount of whey present when I used the whole yogurt to try and achieve this effect in previous batches (rough calcs based on the proportion of whey extracted from the yogurt). 8hr 1st rise, then pull/stretch and division into 2 loaves, 45 min 2nd rise. Bake at 400F 40 minutes.
6. Resultant loaves hot out of the oven. "One for now, one for the freezer." They are what I call "lite whole wheat," a mix of bread flour and whole wheat flour. Had some this morning, good flavor, great toast.