I was giving a friend some advice on making cheese the other day and we sampled a cheese he had taken out of the press a week before. Even though it was really young, it was delicious! It turns out he had made a mistake when adding the starter cultures and had accidentally put in a small amount of yoghurt culture (Lactobacillus acidophilus, bifidobacterium, lactobacillus casei strain) before adding the standard Mesophilic starter when he realised his mistake.
I like it so much that I will be trying my own version of this cheese a few times to see how it develops with age. It was certainly very edible at one week!
So
1. Has anyone ever encountered any cheese variety using yoghurt culture before? (excluding the yoghurt cheese that is just drained yoghurt)
2. Is anyone else interested in giving it a go too?
3. We need a name for this variety if it turns out to be worthwhile. Any ideas?

All three hard cheeses I’ve made so far have had plain yoghurt as the starter, basically because I didn’t have any ‘real’ starters and couldn’t wait for them to arrive. I’ve only tasted one, a month after pressing, and it was a bit salty, but definitely cheese. I’m leaving it to age a bit longer. For the second one I cultured a carton of cream with yoghurt, and used that as my starter. Haven’t tasted it yet (won’t be ready until next month), but it smells heavenly, very buttery. I wait in high hopes!

I also look forward to the day when I will be able to make cheeses actually deserving of a name…..

Yes, I’d be quite willing to give it a go.  I especially like the idea of blending the cultures - it should produce a unique flavor.  I’ve got a couple of ideas for the next makes, but I’ll put this one in the list as well.  And Denise, I had to back off on the salt in my cheese because it was too salty for my taste.  I’ve reduced the salt by 25%, and that is just right for my taste.  While salt is a preservative, and serves to slow down the action of the culture in the aging process, it is also a matter of personal taste.  No point making a cheese that you don’t really care for.

Rich, do you mean you reduce the salt in all your cheeses by 25%, whatever the recipe? Does that mean the cheese also ages faster? I tend to hang back on the salt in cooking anyway - from a health point of view as well as taste, I think less salt is better - if we’re making lotso’yummy cheese, we don’t want an overdose of salt!

The recipes I have are for 2 gal. batches, and require 2 T of salt.  I make a 4 gal. batch with 3 T of salt.  I do so consistently with all my cheese, except of course the brined cheeses.  I may age a wee bit faster, but I haven’t noticed any significant difference.

yogurt has been a common ingredient especially when people want to do a quick cheese and dont have the proper cultures.
Mixing cultures is one of my fav activities, brie and blue culture together has become my fav

OK, the first Yoghurt cheddar/ yogocheddar/ cheddgurt….. thingy is done and in the cheese fridge. It is a standard cheddar pressed at twenty five kilos for twenty four hours at twenty degrees C. The long and relatively warm pressing was to allow the yoghurt culture time to develop. I intend to sample it at one month and every month thereafter to see how it develops. I will be finishing it as a washed rind as I am working on a lot of washed rind cheese at the moment and have been having some really nice results.

I’m going to wan you to keep us posted on this one.  Now, to clarify - did you use yogurt culture and meso culture; or did you use active yogurt itself?

And here’s yet another suggestion for a name - Yoder.

YODER!!! I love it!

I used a yoghurt culture as well as the Mesophilic culture added to the milk as is usually used in Cheddar. I see no reason why a good active live yoghurt culture would not work though. If you did use active yoghurt then you would probably not need to keep it at high temperatures for so long in the initial process.