In the spirit of doing things ourselves (and the fact that our sprouted lentils turned out perfectly) we decided to have a go at making yogurt at home. Eventhough we sell some really nice yogurts at myantidote, the DIY thing will forever be appealing.
Oh, if only our yogurt looked like this....
It sounds like a daunting task, but those who make their own yogurt at home swear by it. For the cost of a tub of yogurt you can pretty much make five times the amount at home. Of course like any of these home made goodies, it takes time, and for many people, it’s just not worth it.
A little short on time ourselves these days, we took an afternoon out to try the yogurt thing. Before I lay out all the directions, I will tell you, the yogurt making was not successful.
With that said, it is supposed to be quite easy. I have a feeling I know what went wrong, and am very eager to try it again. When I can find the time!
We came across a blog post on mydailyplanet and the writer of that post said she got her instructions from therealfoodrevolution.
Here are the instructions we came up with. What I will say ahead of time, is it wasn’t the instructions that messed the yogurt up, but likely the fact that our stove is really old. The yogurt needs to incubate, and I think what happened was the oven just cooled down too quickly. The second thing that might have happened is yogurt choice. As they say in the Real Food Revolution instructions, you NEED to have yogurt with active bacteria cultures and the labelling on the yogurt we started with was a little ambiguous.
So, to start you need:
· Milk – we figured 4L (a bag of milk) is close enough to 1 gallon
· 1 tbsp of plain, unsweetened yogurt with active bacterial cultures
· A big parge pot
· Candy thermometer
· Jars that seal tightly
· A whisk or spoon
· Wire sieve to get rid of clumps (we also used a funnel to reduce the mess!)
Instructions:
1. Preheat oven to 110F
2. On the stove at Medium-high heat, heat milk to 180F, 80C
3. When it hits the temperature, remove the pot immediately from heat and cool to 110-115F (54 C)
4. Skim the skin off the top.
5. Add the tablespoon of yogurt and stir it in.
6. Pour through sieve into storage containers.
7. To incubate the yogurt, allowing bacteria to multiply, put jars in warm oven (shut the oven off).
8. Leave jars in oven for 4 – 8 hours. Yogurt is ready when you can tilt the container and it looks like yogurt, not milk!
9. Refridgerate.
We never made it past step eight. After 6 hours, the yogurt wasn’t very solid. At that point, we panicked and took the yogurt out of the oven. In retrospect, it might have been fine with an hour or two longer. I followed the Real Food directions for saving yogurt, misread the thermometer and then the whole thing curdled.
Sadly, I poured it into the toilet. I will keep you posted next time I try it out. Please let us know if you have more success!
We have been running around like a couple of free range organic grain-fed chickens these days, but we are happy to do so. The Bistro is a great success.
