Ask Allie!
Ask Allie is our advice column, where you can ask all your food-related questions to get digestible answers! No question is off limits!
To have your question answered in Ask Allie posts, please use the form on our website. If you prefer to be anonymous, just say so in the form and we’ll leave your name out when we answer it in the blog! Note that some submissions may be edited for clarity.
Aloha! How can I activate the coconut 🥥 yogurt in powder form that you sent me? I'm a raw vegan and would like to use only plant, raw ingredients. Mahalo for your help.
— Magdalena
Here’s the link for it. In the event you lose this email or wind up with another of our vegan cultures, we keep all of our activation instructions on the website. There will be a link, from a computer browser, that says “Activating the Culture,” and when you hover over it you can choose which one. From the phone, there should be a little box at the top of your browser with 3 lines, and you’ll click on that and look for the activation links there.
Which sour dough starter is the most sour? My daughter just announced that mine wasn't sour enough!! Thanks!!
— Becky
Hi, Becky! Our sourest sourdoughs are all going to be rye. The next most sour ones will be the “alternative” wheats like whole wheats, desem, einkorn, and then of course a couple of the more sour GF starters. For standard wheat (generally using all-purpose flour), none of them really go beyond a fairly balanced flavor profile. What kind of flour, and which sourdough starter are you using? There may be ways to help boost the sourness level either of the starter or of the dough itself.
Follow-Up:
Thanks so much for the quick answer! I am currently using a starter from a friend. The bread has been coming out well. I do have your Einkorn starter and will start it tonight. Also I just found the link on your website describing the sourest ryes that you have. I will order some. This is so fun!!! Thanks for your help. The yogurt culture I got from you (Amasi) is fabulous and so easy.
No problem at all, Becky!
Okay, since I’m assuming the one from the friend is all-purpose based, here is what I would do. Note that this is not a standard protocol, and probably a lot of people would freak out over me saying this: take some of it out and put it in a separate jar. Feed it normally, but only 1x/week. Please use a fermenting jar or Weck/similar, because it’s possible for it to mold in a week with a Mason or other non-hermetically sealed jar. It should look nasty (but no mold) when you go to feed it. DO NOT POUR OFF THE HOOCH. Hooch is the liquid layer up top that sometimes happens. Stir the hooch back in, and give it some flour. If it’s hard to stir, a bit more water. Rinse repeat. Over time it will actually adapt to this neglect and it won’t get more sour after that, but this works pretty well for me. The other thing you can do is to rise your dough too long. If you do it “right,” you’ll stop fermenting it right as it’s about to begin enzymatic breakdown, and the dough really will be more sour by a lot (though it may not have as awesome a rise). You could also do a mix of whole wheat (or other grain that hits those really sour notes in a starter) and ap, and that should also sour it up more over time.
I’m glad you’re enjoying the amasi! The wild rye is my favorite currently, though I haven’t activated all our ryes yet.
Do you still offer tibetan grains and if so what does kefir from them taste like? Thanks.
— Kevin
We have combined all of our various strains into one so as to be able to offer increased microbial diversity without people having to buy a bunch of different strains. That said, Sabrina keeps some of each of the originals in back stock, so if you order kefir and specify in the notes that you wanted Tibetan, she typically can honor those requests. The Tibetan is quite tart!
