Making Yogurt

The best yogurt is made with fresh milk from your favorite cow.

Dorothy

I first started making yogurt from a recipe in Rikki Carroll's book  Home Cheese Making.  I used the re-culturable Bavarian yogurt culture purchased from New England Cheese Making Supply.  I still use this culture when I need to make a new batch of starter.

I take about a gallon or so of fresh raw milk.

I use all stainless pots and utensils.  I store my yogurt in glass only.  Mason jars work well. I usually use pint jars, since we eat a pint of yogurt a day.

I heat my milk to about 180 degrees and then cool it down to 116 degrees.

I find cooling the milk quickly makes a better yogurt in the end.  It also saves me from forgetting the milk as it sits cooling. To cool the milk I simply set the pot into a cold water bath and stir the milk.

Then I add my "starter", which is really just a cup of yogurt that I saved from my previous batch.  I whisk the starter into the milk, and then pour it into my mason jars.

I put the jars into styrofoam coolers to sit for 6 to 12 hours depending on how much "tang" we want in our yogurt. Putting the jars of yogurt in the cooler keeps them warm while they incubate. Notice the half pint of reserved starter.  This is so that I don't have to worry about using up all the yogurt before making the next batch.

After the yogurt sits for the desired amount of time, I refrigerate it for a few hours until it's chilled and it's ready to eat. We like to add maple syrup, strawberry jam, or frozen pureed strawberries...all locally grown of course.