Culturing Your Dairy

If you read my previous posts on dairy fermentation (Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3) and you’re wondering where to purchase a piima culture, read on …

You will most likely have to order a piima culture online as I did.

Moonwise Herbs is one of the places I have found for purchasing a piima culture. I ordered mine from them. They also offer kefir cultures as well. However, if you would like to order a piima culture from Moonwise, do it in the next few days. As of May 21 Moonwise will cease shipping piima cultures until September 2007 due to summer heat.

When you order your piima culture ($12) from Moonwise, it will usually arrive within two days. They charge around $6 for shipping in order to ensure that it gets to you quickly as the culture could be damaged if in transit too long. Once you have your piima culture, you never have to order it again as long as you remember to save some from your starter batch for your next batch.

Along with your piima culture, Moonwise Herbs sends an introductory sheet on how to use your piima. Refer to Sally Fallon’s Nourishing Traditions as well. Fallon’s piima starter recipe, however, calls for one “envelope” of piima culture. Moonwise sends its piima as a starter culture in a little jar, so follow Moonwise’s instructions for creating your starter culture. I believe it is1 pint cream and 1 Tbsp. piima.

After growing your starter culture with the piima sent to you by Moonwise, you can refer to Nourishing Traditions for other piima recipes.

In addition to Moonwise Herbs, Fermented Treasures sells piima cultures in envelopes ($8 ea.). They advertise them specifically for making piima yogurt, but you can use the piima culture for other things as Sally Fallon instructs in Nourishing Traditions. I believe you can order the envelope of piima culture from Fermented Treasures at any time of the year.

Here is an additional link to information on lacto-fermented foods with references to Nourishing Traditions.

And here’s another link to some basic fermenting recipes from Nourishing Traditions, a few which call for piima.

Remember, when culturing your piima use whole-milk dairy products that are either raw or only gently pasteurized (not ultra-pasteurized) and nonhomogenized.