If yeast strains had feelings, which are really easy to project onto them once you start giving them names, I suspect my 15-month-old sourdough starter "Ezekiel" would be seriously cheesed about losing out on the first "culture this" series to yogurt. But turning milk into yogurt is (very marginally) easier than turning flour and water into a starter, and life is busy in the fall when you work in education and watch an absurd amount of college football every weekend. Lame excuses, I know.

Why culture?

Lots of people will claim that home-cultured things taste better or are healthier for you, but those are either entirely subjective or up for serious debate. The main reasons I like culturing things are

1. It's cheaper. Milk is cheaper than yogurt, so even though you have to start with a little bit of yogurt the first time, even your first batch will cost less than it would to buy the same amount of yogurt someone else cultured. And it's not like that's a complicated or labor-intensive process. As Harold McGee noted in his recent NYTimes article on yogurt, the bacteria are doing all the work here. Why pay someone else premium for something that takes no effort or skill to do yourself?
2. It gives you more control over the process, which is part of why people often end up thinking it tastes better. You get to decide how tart, how thick, how rich, and how voluminous you want your yogurt to be. You can start with soy milk if you prefer soy yogurt or skim milk if you want it to be fat-free. You can strain it if you want something closer to Greek-style yogurt at a tiny fraction of the cost. You are the master of your yogurt kingdom.
3. It's like having a science experiment/pet in your kitchen. With both yeast and yogurt cultures, you're basically cyclically growing more by feeding them and putting them in a hospitable environment. They multiply like crazy, and when you have enough of them to suit your purposes, you crush their little yeasty or bacterial dreams of total world domination by putting them  back in a less hospitable environment. There's a nurturing appeal, too, which probably seems to conflict with the idea of thwarting their imagined imperial ambitions, but it's true: I like the sense of ritual and continuity. For yogurt, I like saving the last few tablespoons of every batch for the next one, swaddling the container in towels to keep it warm, and knowing when I eat it that it's something I fed and grew

Sold? If so, I welcome you to "culture this" part 1:

How to make some milk and a little bit of yogurt into a lot of yogurt Read more