Re: Jhan/others...Yoghurt Starter kits...lactic bacteria problems

"Can you simply use a bottled probiotic?"
Yes, so long as they're viable organisms, they should successfully make great yogurt. Both others and myself have successfully done so using liquid or capsule probiotic supplements.

If you live outside the U.S., Abraham has confirmed you can buy non-Bulg/Therm yogurt to use as starter ("yogurt" in the U.S. is required to contain Bulg/Therm.). That should work quite well.

Comments from the sites below:

"Most yogurt products contain L. bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus, which are not regarded as being probiotics because they are poorly able to survive bile environments and are typically unable to colonize the intestinal tract." (This is a dog/cat veterinary website, but I've read the same comments regarding human intake of Bulg/Therm -- couldn't readily find same for this post.)

"But it may be that much of the benefit it provides comes from the bacteria used to ferment milk into yogurt - S. thermophilus and L. bulgaricus. In fact, we know that that L. bulgaricus produces enough hydrogen peroxide in yogurt to kill off most of the acidophilus. Neither of these strains is a natural resident of the human gut, but both create an acid environment that is friendly to probiotics like acidophilus and bifidum, but hostile to disease bacteria." (Or one can just skip these two and go straight to the viable probiotics!)

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=340078
http://www.bodyandfitness.com/Information/Health/Research/friendly.htm