Ask Allie!
Ask Allie is our food-related advice column, where you can ask all your fermenting, cooking, baking, and pantry-related questions to get digestible answers! No question about food is off limits!
Most of you will receive an emailed reply prior to your question hitting the blog, since I frequently think you need a more immediate answer. You should anticipate 1-2 weeks between submitting your question and its appearance on blog. Although emailed replies normally take between 1-3 days, it can take up to a week.
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.
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I have the Swedish Sweet Cream starter and was wondering if we need pasteurized heavy cream for activation and making batches? I have seen pasteurized half and half but it is hard to find pasteurized heavy cream. All the heavy creams are ultrapasteurized in supermarkets.
I would appreciate your help with this!
— Atalay
No, you can use any kind of cream for all of our sour creams. I think my grocery store also only sells UHT, and it’s totally fine.
Allie, How do I get a (tight weave breathable cloth) to make yogurt.
— Joyce
You can use untreated muslin from the fabric store, or even a coffee filter. I personally use a lid, though, and that’s also fine if you don’t want to mess with the cloth covering.
Hi, I found your site while looking for a place to purchase live yeast to begin making my own bread. I was really pleased to see that there is starter for yogurt too - something I wasn't even considering. So, which bread starter do you think is best for a beginner bread maker? Does it matter? I am really new to this. But I think I am going to startes for yogurt too and looking at the differences it seems like the thermophilic is best for me as I like thick yogurt. Any other suggestions when deciding? And as far as scobies - I really want to make my own kombucha so if you have any suggestions for what would be a good choice for a beginner, or is it all just flavor preference, that would be great. Thanks - so glad I found you guys!
— Lacy
I find the Egyptian starter (which is my favorite) to act most closely to commercial yeast (though it still doesn’t act just like it), though I believe Sabrina makes donuts that look like they used commercial yeast with one of the San Francisco starters. It does not, however, matter, because you can use any kind of flour for any kind of starter. My personal inclination would be to buy a starter from the type of flour I ultimately want to bake with, and to freeze half of the packet if I didn’t have access to that flour yet (which means you get 2 distinct starters from the same packet).
In terms of the yogurt, I personally think that the Indian Greek is the best tasting of the thermophils. As I go through and make each product we have so I can write or revise the product description on the website, I taste a tiny bit (I can’t handle the textures of most dairy products that aren’t cheese or butter, so it’s really just enough for me to understand its personality) and then give my kid a bowl to try. She and I both think this is the best of the thermos, though she considers the regular Greek a really close second.
As for kombucha, it really comes down to what kind of tea you want to use. That said, order whichever you choose with just the starter, not the starter and scoby. It’s cheaper, and the scoby is irrelevant in terms of rapid (1-4 weeks) fermentation anyway (it takes several months for a scoby without starter to ferment a batch).
We’re glad you found us too, and I hope this info helps!
