Little House by the Railway Line

Making Yoghurt

Today I made my first attempt at making yoghurt.  I've been meaning to do this for nearly a year, but this was the first time I actually got around to it. I ordered an extra pint of milk for yesterday morning, and got some live yoghurt in the shopping yesterday evening.  You can buy really snazzy kits to do this with, but I wanted to try it the low-tech way, and I think it worked!  I'm really pleased.

I boiled up 3/4 pint milk in a saucepan, and then let it cool until the thermometer read 44C.

Meanwhile I "sterilised" one of my big jam jars by filling it with boiling water and swilling it out, then screwing the lid on and leaving it to cool.  When it was cool I put about 3/4 the small carton of live yoghurt in it.

When the milk had cooled enough, I poured that in to the jar and stirred it all around a bit.  Then, I popped it in our insulated lunchbag, with a hot water bottle half-full of boiling water, zipped it up and shoved it in the bottom of the airing cupboard, near the boiler.  This was about half past eight this morning.

Then I went out, to the butcher, and then to a friends for a slice of delicious chocolate cake and to swap strawberry runners for jam jars.  She also gave me a heap of old Good Food magazines she's finished with, so I shall enjoy reading them.  Then I went to Daily Bread and spent an alarmingly large sum of money there.  It's a good thing I only go about once every two months.

When I got home, at three o'clock, I went up to have a look at it.  The water bottle was now cool, and it had gone thick and lumpy, with thin liquid round the edge.  I'm not sure if that might mean it's slightly "over-yoghurted", but it looked fine once I'd given it a good stir.  It certainly smelt just like the stuff in the supermarket carton, too.

Whereupon I promptly measured out most of it and used it to make soda bread, which we'll have to tea.  Yum!

There are some improvements I would do for next time: I would use more milk - I could have got at least a whole pint in the jar (it also would have been better if I hadn't tipped so much on the worktop while pouring it into the jar); I think I need a proper dairy thermometer, as my jam thermometer has lots of helpful nooks and crannies for milk to stick to while boiling, which is disgusting.

Untitled Comment

18:22, Saturday 12 September 2009 .. Posted by HopefulHeart77

Looks great! This is basically the way I make yogurt. I have an electric maker but it does not work well. It works much better doing it the old fashioned way! Be blessed!