Because
my small batch of yogurt was fairly successful, I was ready to try a larger
run. I bought a gallon of 1% milk from my favorite National Wholesale
Liquidators that sells milk for $3.00 usually. I had in the fridge Stop and
Shop brand low fat yogurt that contained live and active bacterial cultures.
And I was ready!
This
time, I heated my milk up in a crockpot. It took close to 4 hours for the milk
to reach 185⁰F. Then, somewhat foolishly, I attempted to cool the milk by immersing
it into a sink filled with cold water. Big mistake! Immediately, the crock
developed a hairline crack. I quickly, (with the help of SP,) transferred the
milk into 2 cooking dishes, and then let them cool on their own. Unfortunately,
I let them cool to lower than 115⁰F, so I put them into the oven to warm them
back to that temperature. In the meantime, I put about ½ cup of the yogurt to
be used as the starter into a bowl. As soon as the milk was 115⁰F, I mixed
about 1 cup milk into the yogurt, and then poured half the starter into each of
the 2 cooking dished. I covered the dishes, then draped them with a blanket,
and put 2 pots of boiling water on top to help maintain the warm temperature. I
let the yogurt incubate for 8 hours. Then, I strained the yogurt for about 2
hours.
I was
intrigued that the yogurt from each of the dishes came out different than each other.
The one in the shallow pan incubated at a lower temperature (likely due to the
increased surface area it had to let heat escape.) That yogurt was a bit
thinner, maybe a tad thinner than typical yogurt, but still definitely a yogurt
consistency. The other one was much thicker, closer to Greek yogurt
consistency. And both of the yogurts tasted like…yogurt! It was not too tart.
It just tasted like plain yogurt. And none of the slightly grainy texture I had
in my first one. It made about 4 quarts of yogurt, which means that it costed about $0.75 to make 1 quart of yogurt. I was pleased.
Now, I have to find another method
of heating my milk. I might get a large pot to be used for just this purpose.
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| thicker yogurt before straining |
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| thinner yogurt before straining |
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| the yogurts straining! |
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| thick yogurt after straining...it looks like yogurt, right? |