Dadiah

Dadih (Indonesian: Dadih), a traditional fermented milk popular among people of West Sumatra, Indonesia, is made by pouring fresh raw unheated buffalo milk into a bamboo tube capped with a banana leaf, and allowing it to ferment spontaneously at room temperature for two days.

The milk is fermented by indigenous lactic bacteria of the buffalo milk. Its natural fermentation provides different strains of indigenous lactic bacteria involved in each fermentation. The natural indigenous lactic acid bacteria observed in dadih could be derived from the bamboo tubes, buffalo milk or banana leaves involved in milk fermentation.

Dadih is usually eaten for breakfast, mixed together with ampiang (traditional glutinous rice krispies) and palm sugar. Dadih can also be eaten with hot rice and sambal.

Some studies on probiotic properties of indigenous strains isolated from dadih fermented milk demonstrated to exhibit antimutagenic, acid, and bile tolerance as well as antipathogenic properties. Natural wild strains isolated from dadih show inhibitory, competitive and displacing properties against pathogens, and they are promising candidates for future probiotics. Viable cells of Lactobacillus plantarum strains from dadih as well as active metabolism play important roles in removing microcystin-LR, cyanobacterial toxin, and natural wild strain of Lactobacillus plantarum from dadih has the highest removal abilities as compared to the other commercial probiotic strains. This finding offers new and economical tools for decontaminating microcystin containing water.