homemade yogurt

There are 1,000,000 ways to make yogurt, some of which I may experiment with, but for now I'm sticking with the easiest-safest one using what I have on hand. Plus, it tastes really good. I mean it.

You need milk, well, duh. Unpasteurized is best but you can use regular old milk. I did. And you need some plain old plain flavor yogurt. Sure, you can use yogurt culture starters and I may in the future but my grocers doesn't carry it and I wanted yogurt that moment! So buy whatever plain yogurt you like best, but that also has lots of probiotics. You only need a small container.

yogurt...right before I taste-tested it.

You will also need a sterilized jar and equipment sterilized too- spoon, ladle, stainless steel pot, candy thermometer, measuring cup and tablespoon...all sterilized for safety's sake. I know, out in say Mongolia a hundred years ago no one sanitized a thing. But us Americans have super sensitive and weak tummies (which is why probiotics from yogurt are helpful) so let's not play mad pioneer scientist and end up in the hospital. Sterilize!

You need ingredient wise...
4 cups whole milk
2-3 tbsp favorite plain yogurt

Yep. That's it.

Pour milk into stainless steel pot. Why stainless steel? It heats the most evenly and at the right intervals for milk. Others will burn it. And if you're not careful, you can still scald or burn milk in stainless steel, it's just the nature of milk.

Warm the milk and stir stir stir. Keep stirring rather often (not constant, but probably a few good swishes every 30 seconds) and if your thermometer isn't the typical kind that self-hangs into your food, take the temp often. Either way pay attention to temperature, scalding, etc. DO NOT BOIL!

While cooking, prepare an ice-water bath that your pot can fit into. A sink works well.

"Cook" your milk to 180f. Turn off the heat and move your pot of milk to the ice bath. Stir gently and keep notice of the temperature.

meanwhile, scoop 2-3tbsp yogurt into a larger receptacle (as in a 2 cup thing. I used a pyrex 4 cup measuring cup.)

When the milk is 110f, s remove from ice. Scoop/ladle about a cup out and into your yogurt. Stir to combine, but don't get all super-agitated with it, just fold and stir to mostly combine. Add this milky yogurt back into your 110f milk and again gently stir to combine.

Now you can pour the runny yogurt stuff into a jar. If your jar is very cold, warm it with lukewarm water so it won't crack. My pot was huge and jar narrow so I poured it into my pyrex first and then the jar.

Cover your jar with the lid (do NOT seal, just loosely cover) or with some foil kind of scrunched around the lid area/jar mouth.

Place in your oven on bread proof, 100f. (Some use lightbubls and heating blankets....I use my oven. It's simple).

DO NOT AGITATE. Do not stir or move around. Just let it sit.....

Let it sit FOREVER....or so it seems. Anywhere from 4-10 hours. At 5 hours I carefully opened the lid and just barely, slowly tipped it to see it was sheer liquid.

Wait, why should we not agitate it? Agitation can break up the little bacterias or whatever and render your yogurt useless.

My first batch "fermented" in the oven, 100f, for 7 or 71/2 hours (I never set a timer.) Upon gently placing a spoon in, it was not quite yogurt texture, more like heavy whipping cream, but it was bedtime so I put it in the fridge overnight.

ice bath

Next time I will let it ferment/warm/whatever you call it, maybe 9 hours?

(UPDATE: Bought an actual yogurt incubator and it says 7-8 hours but I usually do 10-12 hours).

The result? Thicker than yogurt drinks, but not quite Greek Yogurt thick. More like Yoplait? Well kind of, as they use starch and gelatin to make it more "together". Let's say its just at my limit of thinness, but it can be scooped up so it is firm enough, with a gentle sweetness and tartness.

It totally needs some honey and fruit, both which I cannot have, but being currently sugar-free (not even the fake stuff, not even fruit) I really detect the sweetness and enjoy it plain, out of the jar,