Making Homemade Yogurt

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July 20, 2012 by admin

I keep saying that making your own yogurt is really easy and some of you have asked how I do it.

Here are the simple steps:

You can use milk from the store or milk from your animals. If you use fresh milk from your goat or cow, then I do think it’s a good idea to pasteurize it. I know there’s a ton of debate about this but personally I like to be sure that my yogurt is going to be safe for everyone.

Step one: Heat the milk

Bring the milk up to 110 degrees farenheit. If it’s too hot it will kill the live yogurt culture. If it’s too cold then the cultures won’t grow properly.

Step two: Check temperature and remove from heat when it reaches 110 degrees.

Once the milk is at the right temperature it’s time to put it in a jar and add a couple of tablespoons of live yogurt culture. I use store bought yogurt instead of buying the freeze-dried starter cultures. I have found that the whole milk yogurt seems to give a thicker final product.

Shake the jar to distribute the yogurt culture throughout the warm milk then put it in a place where the temperature will remain at about 100 degrees farenheit for the next twelve hours. Putting the jar into a cooler with a jar of really hot water then putting the lid on keeps it at the right temperature.

Step three: Place the soon to be yogurt in a cooler next to a bottle of hot water.

After twelve hours, take the jar out and you should have a lovely, creamy yogurt. As homemade yogurt doesn’t have pectin it will be a bit thinner than the store-bought version but the taste is wonderful.