homemade yogurt!

A few people emailed me asking for details on the homemade yogurt...here it is.

I never considered making yogurt. Fermented dough (and grape juice) I can handle. Growing bacteria - deliberately! - in a dairy product was, I assumed, a complicated, tricky process best left to the pros.

Then, I went grocery shopping with a dear friend. She suffers from frequent, full-body yeast infections and only 20-30 ounces of Fage and fistfulls of probiotics per day give her any relief. That easily adds up to several hundred dollars per month. She joked that because I am unemployed, slowly losing my sanity, and crave projects because I am a total domestic divagoddesssiren, I ought to try making her a big batch of yogurt.

I didn't even know yogurt could be made. I guess I thought it sorta just, you know, existed.

Hope the people who put me through boarding school, college, and law school didn't read that.

With a little Googling, I was apprehensive. Yogurt starter? Who the heck sells that? Dirty, crunchy, Birkenstocked hippies, I'll bet. (Actually, yes.) Just as I was starting to schedule in a visit to the dry cleaner's - you know how their patchoulified mari-ju-anna smells just oozes into everything - I realized I could just use plain yogurt with active cultures.


But what about the business of temperature? Bringing to 185 sounded easy enough. But how could I keep the yogurt at 110 for 12 hours? I wasn't wild about using the oven, nor do I own an insulated cooler. Then Coco started yapping about something outside and I decided to borrow her electric heating blanket. Perfect.


What the heck, let's try this!

You will need:
Milk
Plain yogurt with active cultures or yogurt starter
Candy thermometer
Heating pad/electric blanket
Optional: cream

1. Set yogurt or starter on counter. It needs to be room-temperature.
2. Bring milk (optional: add some cream) to 185 degrees, stirring often enough so nothing burns, then turn off burner.
3. Let milk cool to 110 degrees. This could take an hour or more, depending on whether you leave it on the counter or stick in the fridge. Do not get all impatient and rush to stir in your starter.
4. When milk is 110 degrees (a little less is ok, too), stir in a few tablespoons of the room-temperature yogurt.
5. Find some way to keep yogurt covered and around 110 degrees for 12 hours. I covered a gallon pitcher with plastic wrap, which allowed the yogurt to be covered while letting me hook the thermometer to the side. I wrapped the electric blanket around the yogurt. With the blanket beneath, around, and on top of a plastic-covered pitcher, the yogurt stayed at or slighly below 110 throughout the night. A heating pad with a towel would also work.
6. When yogurt reaches the desired consistency, eat. Or, for a thicker yogurt, strain through coffee filters.

Now, did you see what I did up there? How I bolded the temperatures? The proper temperature is really all that matters, similar to how proper kneading is really all that matters with a good loaf of bread. Rumor has it that above 110 degrees kills whatever bacteria is it that turns scalded milk into yogurt.

But let's not talk about bacteria. Just keep it to no more than 110.

See? Really easy. Definitely worth a try if you go through a lot of yogurt. A caveat: this is real yogurt. If you're used to what passes as "yogurt" - yogurt, corn syrup solids, artificial sweeteners, thickeners - this yogurt will taste rather sour. But it's ok! You can add in a little vanilla extract (serious yum), honey, or fruit. On its own, it is definitely an acquired taste. Personally, I don't like this yogurt or Fage on its own - but I usually eat yogurt in smoothies.

As with bread, the downside is that there is a lot of waiting around for stuff to happen. But, we're talking about milk and a little yogurt. Worst-case scenario, you're out five bucks.

Woohoo! I feel all granola mother earth. Where's my tie-dye?