Sheep milk frozen yoghurt
Sheep's milk and sheep's yoghurt: tangy, rich and full of character. Nothing like a cow's-milk yoghurt.
Sheep's milk has almost twice the fat and protein of cow's milk. Here that does not translate into a fattier ice cream — it stays at 4.92 % — but into one with far more body than those numbers suggest.
Ingredients
For 1 kgTick each ingredient as you get it ready.
Need to adjust the formula?
Step by step
9 steps · follow the order for the best result
Chef's notes
- ·The yoghurt, with the mix already cold. It is neither heated nor pasteurised with it in.
- ·Do not skip the cold ageing: it hydrates proteins and stabiliser and clearly improves the texture.
- ·The serving temperature depends on your recipe: if you formulate to a softer PAC than your freezer (say -11 °C with the chest at -18 °C), temper it for 5–10 min before serving; if the PAC matches your freezer, it can be eaten straight out.
- ·Why formulate at -11 and not at -18 °C: even though your freezer sits at -18 °C, formulating at -11 makes the ice cream tastes better — at -18 it is so cold that the taste buds barely pick up the flavour and the fat is slow to melt in the mouth. And keeps better: ice cream formulated at -11 and kept at -18 has less free water, suffers less from Ostwald ripening (ice crystals joining and growing) and keeps its creaminess longer.
- ·Keep your own notes: write down the POD and PAC that work best with your machine.
The texture
spot on
Very dense with an almost buttery edge: sheep's milk carries considerably more fat and protein than cow's, and you feel it in the body. The yoghurt adds acidity and that intense, slightly wild dairy base note that sets it apart.
All about this sheep's-milk yoghurt ice cream
Everything dairy here is sheep's: yoghurt and milk. It is an ice cream with a far more pronounced flavour than the cow's yoghurt one, with that unmistakable note sheep's milk leaves on the palate.
The sugar is almost all sucrose, with very little dextrose. It is an unusual split for us and it leaves the sweetness high, because sheep's yoghurt is considerably sharper than cow's. The serving temperature sits in the upper part: it comes out firm.
The solids fall below the band for a custard ice cream, so the sheet will flag it. That is consistent with the other yoghurt ice creams on the site, which also run tight: yoghurt brings water and acidity, not dry extract.
The ingredients and what each does
Every ingredient has a technical job: cream brings fat and creaminess, milk powder raises the non-fat solids, the sugars set the sweetness and the freezing point, and the stabiliser controls crystal growth during storage.
Technique and controlling the numbers
Adjusting the POD (sweetening power) and the PAC (antifreezing power, given as a target temperature) lets you match sweetness and hardness to your taste and your machine. With the selectors in the side bar the formula recalculates itself and you will see how the amount of each ingredient changes.
Storage and common mistakes
Store at -18 °C in an airtight container and avoid freeze-thaw cycles. The commonest faults are not ageing it enough, too much sugar so it never freezes properly, and over-churning, which whips in too much air and wrecks the texture.
Recommended for this recipe
Equipment and ingredients that make the difference.
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