Neither doe they [sc. the Turks] eate much Milke, except it bee made sower, which they call Yoghurd. (Samual Puchas, 1601)

First on my list of projects was sourdough bread, although since it took a while to produce the sourdough culture what I made first was yoghurt...

Like the Turks, I don't really eat much milk, but I do really like yoghurt. Here in Germany it seems to be almost impossible to find Greek yoghurt, something I grew up with by spending too much time on archaeological digs, and which I really miss. Since most German yoghurt has thickeners in it, I couldn't just buy yoghurt and strain it. This led me to explore making my own, using a recipe that I found here.

Unfortunately, when I first tried it, I didn't realize how warm the milk has to stay (ok, so I wasn't really paying attention) and it didn't yogh. Undeterred, I reboiled the milk, added some more yoghurt, and tried to keep it warmer. After discovering that my plastic bowl really could go in the oven at a low temperature (thank you IKEA) I stuck it in the oven at 50C for a few hours, and then left it overnight with the heat turned off. Lo and behold, the next morning I had yoghurt! I strained it through a jelly bag and it was good, despite the monstrous effort required to produce it.

Excited by my (eventual) success, I made it a second time. Again, I used the trick with the oven, and hurrah, it worked! I strained this batch for a long time, until it was so thick that you could cut it in slices, the way proper yoghurt is supposed to be. I had created yoghurt, and it was good.

Dedicated to Petrus Comestor

Cooking is not just a nutritional necessity, something that has to be done in order to eat and so to survive; it is a large part of my life. I spend far too much time in the kitchen, time that would probably be better spent on the other part of my life, writing a Ph. D. thesis on medieval theology. This topic is perhaps less suited to general dissemination than food, not least because it's mostly a good cure for insomnia, but I hope that occasionally some of it will emerge on to this blog. But completing a chunk of work recently left me with a little more (!) time to spend on kitchen-related activities that I've been pondering for a while. The excitement at achieving some of these and the occasional weird result has resulted in me telling anyone who will listen about my latest success/disaster. The first purpose of this blog, therefore, is to save the poor people who would have to hear (probably several times) about what I've recently been up to in the kitchen. The second is so that I can record what worked and what did not, with the intention of producing slightly more successes and fewer disasters. Even if I remain a disastor, I may keep my friends this way...