home made yogurt

While awaiting our blizzard yesterday,I decided to make some home made yogurt. Since milk was back up to near $3.50 a gallon this month at the store I decided to use what we had on hand which was frozen or powder milk. Since I wanted instant gratification, I went with the powdered milk. When milk gets expensive, powdered milk does become the more economical choice. I have never made yogurt from powdered milk before but have made yogurt before so I thought this would be a good experiment.

I used a store bought yogurt for my culture since it has been a while since I used any of my frozen cultures and I thought it would be a good time to replace them.

I am making ours on the wood stove rather than in a crock pot , dehydrator, lamp light or on the counter top.It requires no energy or fuel resources to speed the process up by making it on the wood stove but speeds the process of making it up a bit. Remember I was after instant gratification..

What are some of your ways to make yogurt

here is the recipe I used
3-3/4 cup warm tap water
1-2/3 cups instant nonfat dry milk
4 tablespoon store-bought, plain yogurt with active yogurt cultures

In a large saucepan combine the tap water and dry milk powder. Stir it very well, and let it sit a few minutes. Then stir it again. All of the dry milk should be dissolved. Heat the milk over medium low heat until it reaches 180°. This kills off any competing bacteria so that the yogurt will respond better to the acidophilus cultures. Remove from the stove and allow to cool to 115°. If the milk is any hotter than this then it will kill off the yogurt cultures. Add the store-bought plain yogurt to the warm milk. Stir well. Allow it sit for a few minutes and stir a final time. This should dissolve the store-bought yogurt completely.

Carefully pour the mixture(keep a half cup out as your next starter, these can be froze and used ) into a very clean, quart-sized, wide-mouthed canning jar, or another clean, quart-sized container.cover with a cloth and incubate the yogurt in a warm spot for 6 to 8 hours, or until it is set almost as thick as store-bought yogurt. Chill and eat. Add fruits, make smoothies, parfaits, use as sour creme. If you drain drain the liquid , you have what is sometimes referred to as greek yogurt, yogurt cheese or yogurt cream cheese. The remaining liquid is whey and can be used in breads and other recipes.

The yogurt turned out very creamy, thick and non bitter.It made a very nice yogurt. Total cost of the quart of yogurt about 1 dollar. Had I not wanted the instant gratification, I could have thawed a gallon of goat milk out and used that and cost would have been nothing.

I made a nice caramel apple parfait topped with skillet granola for dessert