Heriz-Smith

Little things make my day.

Last night I noticed we had almost a half gallon of milk that was 3 days past its date. It was the milk we always get- from White Orchard Farm. It’s wonderful unpasteurized raw whole milk, and I hate to see it go to waste, so I decided to make yogurt. This is something I’ve done several times before over the past years, but Laurie’s never really liked it so I’ve only done it once since we moved to Maine.

Well, since I hadn’t done it for ages, I searched for a recipe. The first one I looked at was for plain yogurt – but it had all sorts of instructions about sterilizing the jars. I think people have made yoghurt for quite a bit longer than they’ve known about that – I don’t think you really have to do that! Not if you’re making it for yourself!

The next recipe I looked at mentioned that apart from an commercial yogurt maker, everything you need is in your kitchen. This same recipe has several methods you can use to maintain a constant 108° while incubating the culture.Well – if you have a gas oven with a pilot light, you don’t need a yogurt maker or any sort of setup at all to maintain this temperature.

A lot of the recipes I found list ingredients to help thicken the yogurt; I don’t know whether it was the milk I used or the yogurt I used as a starter (Stoneyfield) but mine came out very thick and I only used milk.

So here’s how you do it:

Get a quart jar and fill it with milk. Pour the milk into a saucepan. If you want to make a flavored yogurt (vanilla for instance) you might want to add a 1/4 cup of sugar at this point. Heat over medium until it’s just about to boil.

Let it cool until it’s just warm to the touch. Add some vanilla at this point if you like. I read here (a few pop up menus there) here that it’s a good idea to test by pouring over your wrist, since your fingers are not so sensitive to temperature. I’ve never had a problem with using my fingers though.

Once the milk has cooled to be just warm to the touch (I read here that it should be between 110° and 95°) stir in 2-3 tablespoons of yogurt. I have found that Stoneyfield works well.

Next pour the milk into the jar, tighten the lid, and put in your oven and leave over night. In the morning, it should have turned into yogurt – open it up and take a look.

Now here’s what made my day. This morning I checked the yogurt and it hadn’t set. What I didn’t mention earlier was that I’d screwed up last night. I was a bit tired and misread the recipe for the making the vanilla flavored yogurt. I’d only made plain before, so it was new to me, and I just wasn’t paying attention. So instead of adding 1/4 cup of sugar, I added nearly 3/4 cup, and instead of 1/2 tsp of vanilla I added 2 tbs. When I saw that there wasn’t yogurt yet in the jar, I assumed I’d killed the bacteria. It felt a bit cool to me so I turned on the over for a bit at its lowest. And then forgot I’d done that for 20 minutes. When I remembered, I quickly turned off the oven and felt the jar – it wasn’t hot, but it was more than lukewarm. I figured it was worth just leaving it for the day to see what would happen – so I left it in the oven until about 9:00 tonight – about 24 hours after I’d started.

When I remembered it just a little bit ago (I’d completely forgotten about it) I was amazed to see that it had turned to a nice firm yogurt during the day. The good news then is that, at least in this case, you don’t need a thermometer, commercial yoghurt maker, sterilized jars or anything else other than a milk, starter yogurt, a jar and something to heat it in. While I’m sure you’ll have a better success rate if you follow some of the other recipes, at least I know that these bacteria are pretty tough – they can be put in too much sugar, with too much vanilla, heated up too much and then pretty be left alone. And in the end, they still do their thing and turn the milk into yogurt. Pretty cool – you should try it!