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multipurposegoddessSo, one of the things I've been doing lately is trying to eat yogurt every day, because i'm sure I could use the calcium and probably my intestinal flora could use the boost (I'm also taking probiotics but I don't plan on doing that forever). Me being me, I found buying yogurt every time I turn around (ie, every week, more or less) oppressive. Unfortunately, if I buy a large container of yogurt, I never eat it, it just sits there in the fridge telling me I'd need a bowl to have some and it just doesn't happen, and buying all those individual portion-sized containers hurts my eco-friendly conscience. So
I looked into making yogurt ad hoc, but all the techniques i came across sounded like a lot of trouble, frankly.
So instead of buying yogurt every time I turned around, I had to get milk every week. Now, I was previously in the habit of buying milk never at all, so that was a big change. I had assumed I could pick up a bunch of shelf-stable quarts and be okay for a while, but I can't find any. People say they make yogurt out of dry skim milk powder, and i guess that would do in a pinch, but it doesn't seem appetizing at all - I like cream, I don't like milk, the lower the fat content the less I like it.
Anyway, I've been making the yogurt with cold milk directly into the glass jars of the yogurt maker with some powdered milk for extra thickness and starter yogurt. The instructions that came with it said not to bother boiling the milk if it was UHT and I figured pasteurized was good enough. Which worked okay, but I was getting some curds which I decided I didn't really want (I do like cottage cheese, but not when I am expecting yogurt). Something else I read said that heating the milk also broke down proteins or sugars or something that made the yogurt coagulate better and recommended using a crockpot to avoid scalding. So, I did that - half-gallon of milk plus a half-cup of powdered milk into the crockpot on low for a couple of hours, then cooling to 110 degrees, adding starter yogurt, and into the glass jars of the yogurt maker. Of course, said little glass jars hold about a quart, all told, so the rest went into thermoses. Which seemed to go fine, as 8 hours later it all looked like yogurt.
Chilled the glass jars for a couple of hours and just had the first serving with fig preserves. Yum. The ~quart that was in the thermoses is straining to be like greek yogurt, which I prefer, and the whey from that will go into whatever I bake next. Sandwich bread, most likely.
And I've still got a half-gallon of milk because I didn't know how big my crockpot was when I bought the gallon. So I may do this all again sooner rather than later.
I looked into making yogurt ad hoc, but all the techniques i came across sounded like a lot of trouble, frankly.
So instead of buying yogurt every time I turned around, I had to get milk every week. Now, I was previously in the habit of buying milk never at all, so that was a big change. I had assumed I could pick up a bunch of shelf-stable quarts and be okay for a while, but I can't find any. People say they make yogurt out of dry skim milk powder, and i guess that would do in a pinch, but it doesn't seem appetizing at all - I like cream, I don't like milk, the lower the fat content the less I like it.
Anyway, I've been making the yogurt with cold milk directly into the glass jars of the yogurt maker with some powdered milk for extra thickness and starter yogurt. The instructions that came with it said not to bother boiling the milk if it was UHT and I figured pasteurized was good enough. Which worked okay, but I was getting some curds which I decided I didn't really want (I do like cottage cheese, but not when I am expecting yogurt). Something else I read said that heating the milk also broke down proteins or sugars or something that made the yogurt coagulate better and recommended using a crockpot to avoid scalding. So, I did that - half-gallon of milk plus a half-cup of powdered milk into the crockpot on low for a couple of hours, then cooling to 110 degrees, adding starter yogurt, and into the glass jars of the yogurt maker. Of course, said little glass jars hold about a quart, all told, so the rest went into thermoses. Which seemed to go fine, as 8 hours later it all looked like yogurt.
Chilled the glass jars for a couple of hours and just had the first serving with fig preserves. Yum. The ~quart that was in the thermoses is straining to be like greek yogurt, which I prefer, and the whey from that will go into whatever I bake next. Sandwich bread, most likely.
And I've still got a half-gallon of milk because I didn't know how big my crockpot was when I bought the gallon. So I may do this all again sooner rather than later.