Sheep's Milk Yogurt From Simply Greek

With the arrival of the new Simply Greek sheep's-milk yogurt, Greek yogurt is returning to its roots.

Traditionally made in Greece with sheep's milk, Americans have come to think of the ubiquitous cultured milk as purely a byproduct of cow's milk. Lucky for us New Yorkers, two farmers located a bit closer than southern Europe have teamed to teach us otherwise.

The creation of this new (old) yogurt began when Scott Burrington of New York's Ovinshire Farm brought his ewes' milk from the foothills of the Adirondacks to his neighbor Tim Joseph at Maple Hill Creamery.

Maple Hill, home of ridiculously thick, grass-fed and organic European-style cream-line yogurts (six ounces, $1.49), immediately recognized the silky attributes of the sheep's milk from Ovinshire Farm.

A cow can produce up to 100 pounds of milk a day, but sheep are downright stingy, yielding only three to five pounds daily. And because of its high fat level, sheep's-milk yogurt does not require straining to eliminate its whey, as cow's-milk yogurt does.

The addition of cultures and evaporated cane sugar turns the fresh milk into an ultrarich yogurt that harnesses the sweetness and butterscotch flavors of unadulterated sheep's milk. Individual six-ounce containers of Simply Greek ($2.75) come in banana, maple, vanilla and plain. A blueberry flavor is in the works.

The past has never tasted so fresh.

Maple Hill Creamery and Simply Greek products are available at Whole Foods, Dean & Deluca, Murray's Cheese and Fairway or delivered through manhattanmilk.com For a full list of stores click here.