Home Made Yogurt

Home Made Yogurt

There are as many ways of making yogurt as there are people who enjoy making it but most of them are based on mis-information that is repeated as often as the recipes are published. After putting as much energy into learning the science of yogurt as I have into all my other endevors, you may rest assured that the yogurt produced by what follows can not be improved upon.

The list of ingredients for about a quart and a half of yogurt is as follows:

Water.................................................... 40 oz

Non-fat Dry milk powder................. 225 gr

Half & Half........................................... 9 oz

Unflavored Commercial Yogurt................ 1/2 cup (throw the rest away, it is not fit to eat but makes a decent starter culture.)

You can scale the size up or down to suit your needs.

Proceed as Follows:

In a pan large enough to hold about 2 quarts, heat the water to 190F and then add the milk powder slowly while stirring to avoid lumps. You can also add some of the water to the powder and stir to a heavy cream and then add this to the water to eliminate lumps.

Add the half and half and hold the mixture at 180F for 30 minutes.

Allow to cool to 110F and then stir in the yogurt starter. Again, if you add a little milk to the starter you can cream it up before adding to avoid lumps.

Pour this mixture into a plastic container with a lid (for later) that will be your serving container. If you pour it through a coarse strainer, you will catch any remaining lumps.

If your oven will maintain low temps, set it at 110F, put in the mixture and in 5 hours, you will have the World's Greatest Yogurt. As an alternative, put the warm mixture in the microwave or any insulated box and let sit over night. You could also heat up the oven to 200F or so and after shutting it off, ripen the yogurt in it over night.