Food Alchemy

The other day I was describing what really gets me going as far as food goes, and I ended up describing it as food alchemy. The process of transforming one food into something completely different. Now I understand that many types of cooking could fit this definition, so it is kind of a contrived phrase, but I like the sound of it. I am going back to the basics in food preparation, trying to overcome the first challenges faced by an agricultural society, food preservation. Most of these challenges were met with our own favorite microbial workhorses, the lactic acid fermenting bacteria. They allowed the first dairy farmers to preserve milk as cheese, to keep your pork as dry sausage, and to turn cucumbers and cabbage into pickles and sauerkraut. Yeast is another microbial force which has been tamed and now helps us with lots of things, bread and beer principle among them. So I will detail my forays into food alchemy here, starting with last night's project: Yogurt!


The starting material, millions of bacteria, hungry for lactose (milk sugar) and milk, supplying that lactose. I added a bit of powdered milk to the liquid just to thicken things up a bit.

As was the process for mozzarella you have to heat the milk, astute observers may note that my temperature probe looks different. That is because it is, sadly my last one died, it kept insisting my house temperature was 157 degrees, which I assure you it was not. Anyway, then milk is heated to 190ish for about 20 min, this is a step I left out of my last attempt at yogurt, which yielded something more like buttermilk, which is also tasty. After research I found that this step changes some of the casein (soluble milk protein) so that it gels better, resulting in a thicker yogurt. The milk is cooled and inoculated with commercial plain yogurt and left to incubate.
















My incubation temp was a bit low at 106, but I added some boiling water and wait 3 hours. Meanwhile... Rock Band!!!
















Then, Yogurt Alchemy!!!