I grew up in Minnesota, to which our family moved from Pereyaslav, Ukraine. There, we had Smetana, made by Oriental Dairy, which also made ricotta cheese and cottage cheese. It closed some years ago when the children did not want to take over the business. I never understood why it was so far superior to other sour creams, because I thought it's saying "smetana" on the top just meant sour cream in Yiddish. I now find out that smetana is a certain kind of sour cream. This smetana was thick, grainy, very rich in flavor. It may have been less fat than sour cream, but he also made a sour half-and-half as well. I don't know how it was made. If one of you who knows smetana could read "Joy of Cooking" and use one of their recipes as a base, and tell us how to adapt it to make a good smetana, that would help. It matters what you start with: heavy cream, light cream, and what you sour it with, and how much you stir it, how long you age it, etc. I would love to make my own. Breakstone's sour cream, while originally a Jewish company, makes a very plain cream that is barely sour. Yogurt is not at all the same. The closest is Greek yogurt, so far, that I have tasted.