Quote:
Originally Posted by Baerdric
No, it's kinda there before I even heat the milk. I think it's the milk. I suspect that the cream partially turned to butter in transport or something.
And I was very careful to keep track of temperature this time and I have two thermometers that agree... unless they are both wrong.
I'm going to try next with just regular milk and some cream I found with no additives. I don't like the idea of powdered milk although I'm sure it's fine. Just persnickety.
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If you're still using raw and not homogenized milk, that's just butterfat, most likely; butterfat does not ferment so it's just floating around on top.
Your "film" is likely to disappear when you use the "regular" milk and cream. Often, powdered milk is added to yogurt to give the beasties more lactose to digest, gets more acidic and thicker
more quickly. The 24H ferment should pretty much do the same, followed by the strain.
I get some nice 3.9% butterfat yogurt up here, and sometimes a nice 6%, natural or organic, depends on the brand, so I've gotten lazy and stopped making my own, just load up when the stuff's on sale. But I used to do it, pretty easy once you get in the rhythm, and I used my kitchen thermometer, the quick one, bring the dairy up to 170-180F, hold there for up to 10m (gets rid of competing bacteria and alters the proteins so they "bind" to each other better and you get a thicker yogurt, there's a lengthy discuss about this in a few forums some years back), then let cool to about 105-110, stir in the "starter", either packaged stuff like the Yogourmet or some reserved yogurt from the last batch, then into warmed jars, on a towel-wrapped heating pad on Low and covered with more towels as "insulation". I then go away and leave it overnight.
It worked every time. In the morning, off the pad, and into the fridge. This is a good set time, and provides the final thickness you will get from the ferment.
I strain it only if I want to make something particularly yummy, like my rosewater vanilla ice cream, which is half strained yogurt, nice and thick, and half whipping cream, with other mysterious additives
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