Homemade Yogurt

Who even thinks when they go to the grocery store and pick up a carton of yogurt, "hey I could make this stuff!" and puts it back on the shelf? I never did! Because I never knew how! Well thanks to my sister Karlie and her hubby Ryan who have begun a new gluten free and incredibly healthy lifestyle, I have had healthy urges to change the way that my family eats. Karlie says that if you want to start to make that change in a small way, something you can start by doing is making things yourself that you normally wouldn't. Ex. Cream of chicken/mushroom soup, chicken broth, healthy snacks to put on your shelves, yogurt, spagetti or pasta sauces, etc. And all of those things I have learned, can be so easily made on your own! Starting with yogurt. So here is a post to document my almost 2 day project of culturing yogurt myself, and making delicious homemade granola to go with. Hope you find it interesting! If you are up for a fun little homemade project with a yummy finish- do this. It is fun to watch and really healthy for you as a finished product!

The thing about making your own yogurt is not the amount of work you have to do, but the amount of time you have to wait. When I first started making it, I was so anxious to see the final result, but it takes a good amount of time. I followed the recipe at :

http://www.melskitchencafe.com/2013/01/diy-homemade-yogurt.htm#

To start your project you'll want to being around 4pm in the afternoon to time things just right. This worked perfect for me. You will need:
*1 gallon of milk (I used whole milk, but 1% or 2% work fine too) My sister has even made hers with substitutes like soy or coconut milk and it turned out yummy too for you who don't have much to do with dairy.
*1/2 cup plain yogurt, making sure that it contains active live cultures. Lactobacillus bulgaricus and S. Thermophilus in particular.
*A slow cooker and candy thermometer
*Cheese cloth
*Yogurt Toppings of choice

To start, you will want to pour your milk into your slow cooker (which should be a 4-5 quart cooker), cover it, and turn it on to heat up. You want to heat your milk to 180 degrees. This takes 2-3 hours usually.

So by about 6:30 pm my milk had reached the 180 degrees. Once it has heated to this temperature, you want to pull the pot out of the heating base, and let it cool to 112-120 degrees. It is really important that you don't A. Overheat your milk to start, and B. You don't let it get to cool. The heating and cooling process is vital to the active yogurt cultures keeping alive. To cool my milk to about 2 hours. So around 8pm, I was ready for the next step.

Take your half cup of yogurt, and put it into a container. Then take 1 cup of your now warm milk and combine it with the yogurt and whisk it all up! Once it is smooth, you can pour this back into your crock pot and cover it. Now you'll want to preheat your oven to 250 degrees. While it is preheating, you are going to swaddle your crock pot like a wee babe inside a bath towel :) For insulation purposes. Wrap the towel around the crock pot so there are no openings. Once your oven reaches 250, turn it off and put your baby inside. 

Quickly close the oven door, and turn on your oven light. Guess what? More waiting. By this time, you will want to leave it in overnight.

When morning comes get excited! Around 8 am, pull your pot out of the oven. It will look thick, and have that watery layer over the top (whey). Something like this...

It made me really excited to the yogurt at this point, and I knew I was almost done! Lastly, comes your cheese cloth. Put a colander inside of another larger bowl, and line the inside of the colander with your cheesecloth. You are going to scoop all of your yogurt into the cheesecloth lined colander, so it looks like this-

Cover it with a lid of some sort, and put it in the fridge for 4-6 hours. The purpose of this is to strain all of the excess why and fluid. And boy will you be shocked at how much there is!! Here is what it looked like after the fact.

SO much thicker with all of the fluid drained! I wish I had taken a picture of how much there actually was! At this point you are practically done! I took my yogurt and put it into my blender and pulsed it to smooth it all out. I initially just whisked it, but it was still a little clumpy (which is fine) but i wanted mine silky smooth. Then viola! You are through! Put it into a container to store for up to 2 weeks in your fridge. But do eat some first. It is pretty tart on it's own, so if you want you can sweeten it you can add some sugar during the blending process, but I highly recommend honey instead. We used raw honey and it is SO good!! Also featured on our yogurt are blackberries, strawberries, and my homemade granola. (Which will be a much shorter blog post to come) Your own homemade parfait. 

BON APETITE!

YUM.