How to make home made yogurt
This is for chickypoodles :cheesygrin:
First time you do homemade yogurt you need a starter. As starter you could use one tub of plain yogurt (regular or with probiotic like Activia yogurt) or ferment starter in powder. In Qc powder starter (lyophilised bacteria) is easy to found at usual grocery store (Provigo, Métro, IGA, SuperC, Maxi, ect) on the yogurt section or in the organic fridge section. The usual brand is "yogourmet". This brand have regular yogurt starter, probiotic starter and also kéfir starter.
Side note, you need the starter, but you don't need special machine to made yogurt, your regular oven is perfect. You just need to change the 40W light bulb for a 60W and close the chimney hole (you know the back element of the stove with the hole... remove the element and cover the hole with a small plate). Usually the heat produced by the 60w light bulb is enought to reach and maintain your oven at 37 degre C (98F) the optimal temperature to do yogurt.
If you want fat free yogurt, use fat free milk. If you want more fat, use 3.25% milk and add some 10 or 35% cream. You have the choice!
Step one:
If you do regular yogurt, open the 60w light bulb of the oven and close the chimney hole. If you do probiotic yogurt you will do it later.
Put the milk in a pan
Heat gently the milk at medium/low to 82 degre C (180F), mix occasionally.
Keep the milk at this temperature for 30 minutes.
Step two:
For drinkable yogurt go to step three
For firm yogurt add 1/4 to 1/2 cup of milk powder (basically this add protein to your yogurt and help to have more firm yogurt) per liter of milk and mix gently
Step three:
Cool down the milk by immersion of the pan in cold water (do this in your sink) until milk temperature reach 37 degre C (98F) for regular yogurt or 22 degre C (72F) for probiotic yogurt.
Step four:
Add the starter
If you use a yogurt tub (or your previous yogurt) add approx 10% of starter (this mean if you have 4L of milk you need to add approx 400ml of yogurt starter) and mix gently.
If you use powder starter, go with product indication (or less, one half of specified work perfectly but the incubation time will be a little bit more long) add powder on the milk and mix gently.
Step five:
Put the inoculated milk in 500ml Mason jar with wide mouth (or the container you want). With 4L of milk you need between 8-10 Mason jars 500ml (8-9 jars the first time you made yogurt, 10 jars if you add powder milk to have firm yogurt or at you second time batch of yogurt).
Put the lid loosely on Mason jar, (don't close tight, you don't want to kill your bacteria and/or don't want a mess in your oven)
Step six:
For regular yogurt, put the mason jar with inoculated milk in your oven pre-heat at 37 degre C (98F)
For probiotic yogurt, put the mason jar with inoculated milk in your oven not pre-heat, so at 20-22 degre C (72F). Open the light in your oven and close the chimney hole (you know the element with the hole... remove the element and cover the hole with a small plate). Temperature will increase slowly (some bacteria strain of probiotic yogurt need lower temperature (around 22 degre C) at the beginning and other strain work better at 37-42 degre C. This is why we start at lower temperature and increase it slowly.
Let incubate the milk until you get your yogurt. This take around 4-6h for regular yogurt and close to 12h for probiotic yogurt. Myself I let my yogurt in the oven overnight.
Step seven:
Put the yogurt in the fridge.
If you want flavor or sugar in your homemade yogurt, add it at the moment to serve. You could use jam (home made jam always better!), lemon curd, honey, maple syrup, pomagrenate syrup, ect. Add some granola, oats, seeds (sunflower, soy, flax, sesame, ect), fresh fruits, ect...
PS: this recipe is more long to wrote and read than to do!!!
