mmexlibris | [recipe] Mad Scientist Yoghurt!

Okay, it's just standard garden variety yoghurt, but it's like watching bread rise. You know people have been doing it for thousands of years, but it's still amazing.

Homemade Yoghurt (makes 7 cups)

Ingredients:
48 oz whole milk
6 oz plain yoghurt (use one with active cultures)

Equipment:
1 large microwave safe bowl
1 small bowl
whisk
7 half pint glass mason jars, or other glass containers
cast iron dutch oven (optional)
cooking thermometer (optional)
towels

Preheat oven to lowest setting. If you're using cast iron, put it in to warm up as well. I also put my baking stone in the oven.

1) In the big bowl, microwave milk to 180° F / 82° C. (Alternately, use a double boiler.) This is the point just before boiling, where tiny bubbles are starting to form. Heating the milk alters the structures of the proteins so it will set.

2) Remove the milk from the heat, take off the skin that's formed on top, and cool to 110° F / 43° C. If you don't have a thermometer, try the time honoured inner wrist test, like you would for a baby bottle. It should be warm, but not hot enough to hurt.

3) Put the yoghurt in the small bowl, and whisk in some of the warm milk, until it's well blended.

4) Whisk this mixture back into the large bowl. This is called inoculation.

5) Pour the mixture into the sterilised jars. You can do this in one bowl but you want the yoghurt to ferment all the way through in one container. So keep in mind you'll be refrigerating this one bowl at the end. This is like watching a cake rise as it cooks. No messing with it until it's done fermenting and the mixture has set. No pokey pokey, no stirring. Just leave it alone to do its thing.

6) I put a few tea towels inside the cast iron dutch oven, and put the jars in that. This allowed me to move the whole pot as one unit into the oven. My dutch oven has a lid, also preheated, and that went on top, and the whole thing was covered with big towels.

7) If you have an oven thermometer, you want to keep the heat a little over 100° F / 38° C. I think I turned the oven on once after two hours, just before I went to bed.

8) After four to eight hours, you can check to see if it's set up. I left it overnight. The longer you let it ferment, the stronger the flavours will be, and if you leave it too long, the whey will separate out. So we refrigerate it to stop the production of acid. Chill and enjoy with honey, a spoonful of jam and perhaps a pinch of salt.

ETA: The taste is phenomenal. The consistency is a little less firm than I prefer. One of the tricks is to add 2 Tbsp of Dry Milk to step 3. So I'll try that next time. But otherwise, omg nomalicious homemade yoghurt!