how to make home made yogurt - stress free method.

I made a batch of yogurt today. well actually, it's going right now. But it's going to be great, I know it. I love yogurt. The baby loves yogurt. But i hate how for one large container of Stoneyfield it's what, over three dollars? Ugh. Or those stupid little tiny containers... And me being who I am, said, there has to be a better way to do this. It's way too expensive to keep buying yogurt as much as we did. So I did some searching out on the interweb, and even in those old square/rectangular things with papers in them ( they're called books, boys and girls) I found a method that I tried.. It worked alright. And then my husband found another method. The second method is the one I am going to share with you. It's awesome. If you eat yogurt or have kids who eat yogurt, then check this out, and try making your own!

I know as a blog, I should take pictures of my own experience making yogurt. But this guy does it so much better than I would (step by step and illustrating) I'll just give you his link and you can follow along. he's fairly well respected in the cheese making and yogurt making world. This site was referenced, and his name mentioned in one of the cheese making books my sister has. If you explore the guy's website, there's a whole bunch of other stuff, mostly cheese making stuff. So have fun exploring :)

Read the directions a couple times, just to make sure you have it. It's very simple, but you know, if you're doing something different for the first time, best to make sure you have a good knowledge of the instructions.

The only things that I do differently:

• We don't do the whole sterilizing jars process. We don't usually keep our yogurt in jars. But we make sure that whatever we use to store the yogurt in is very clean. So ideally this step is already done by the time you get ready to make your yogurt.

• I don't use a cold water bath to cool the scalded milk. I just turn the burner off,and let it cool that way. Too much clean up when it comes to make a cold water bath in my incredibly, ridiculously, far too tiny kitchen. (I've seen bathrooms larger than my kitchen.)

• I use a normal candy thermometer to keep an eye on the temperature, and I use one of my big sauce pans. Nothing special.

• My cooler that I put the yogurt in when it's finishing off, is just a basic white styrofoam cooler that you can get anywhere. just make sure it's tall enough for your containers.

• Our starter is typically Stoneyfield, but that's because we can get it really cheap on sale. But it works with whatever brand yogurt. Just make sure it's not a flavored yogurt. Just got with basic, boring Plain yogurt.

• If your yogurt ends up staying in the cooler longer than the prescribed three hours, or even over night that's fine. I've been known to start a batch of yogurt and then go to bed to awaken to lots of lovely fresh yogurt. It's in a cooler, for Pete's sake. It will be fine. I wouldn't leave it there all day and all night. But as soon as you can.

This method works out like a charm, every time. (Unless your husband decides to mix the yogurt starter and the milk together too early while the milk is too warm and kills your starter, and then leaving you with a gallon of unusable milk. But hey.... details details. And he did find this method, so I can't be too annoyed.)

http://biology.clc.uc.edu/Fankhauser/cheese/yogurt_making/yogurt2000.htm

This method above is sooo simple. I can't recommend it enough. Have fun!