I love yogurt. I try to eat it every day. The problem is, if you buy it, it can get pricey. So I did some online research and found a great way to get my daily yogurt for a fraction of the price.
What you will need:
1 gallon of milk (any type of milk you want to use)
1 cup of yogurt with live and active cultures – later you can use the yogurt you’ve made as a starter
Thick bottomed pot (large enough for 1 gallon of milk)
Candy thermometer
Sterile canning jars
Ice chest
Heat milk in pan to 120 deg F stirring constantly
Combine some of the heated milk with the yogurt and mix until smooth. Add mixture into the hot milk.
Put mixture into sterile jars and seal lids. Place the sealed jars into an ice chest filled with hot water that is between 110-120 deg F.
Leave overnight in ice chest or until gelled. Place jars in the refrigerator.
That’s it.
The texture will be different than what you buy at the store because it doesn’t contain gelatin, modified corn starch or other added gelling agents. If you want a thicker, Greek style yogurt you can strain it. Place a large coffee filter in a colander, put the yogurt in the filter, place colander over a bowl and place in fridge. Leave overnight.
You can add fruit to the bottom of the jars or mix in sugar and vanilla extract for flavoring.
I love my homemade yogurt. I use a Salton yogurt maker, which works really well. I also had a fancier one from Williams-Sonoma at one point, but it had more pieces to clean and I don’t think it did as good a job. It only makes a quart at a time, though. And honey makes an excellent stir-in.
why do you heat the milk and yogurt, that will pasteurize it and kill all the active live cultures won’t it? I have made yogurt using raw goats milk and a spoon of store bought yogurt, mix and let sit out on table with cheese cloth over the top or loose lid. I suppose Heating it reduces chance of spoilage from cross contamination of bad microbes. But is it really necessary if you are starting with fresh clean milk and fresh clean cultures?
The heating to 185* is to change the structure of the proteins and get a more uniform, firm yogurt.