Yogurt Recipe

For this promised recipe, I'm going to link to Lisa's website: click here. Lisa has a post with this and a few other recipes (including a granola one!).

I've been attempting to make yogurt since Charles was a toddler (4 years now), with varying success. Sometimes the yogurt thickens, sometimes it doesn't. Finally, this year, I bought a candy thermometer and followed a recipe to the "T". It was then I realized that making yogurt is all about the temperature of the yogurt and the incubation period.

Several recipes are very vague, "let the milk cool to the temperature of bathwater" (such a subjective temp), or "keep the pot warm for four to eight hours" (how warm?). I've been heating my milk on the stove and then waiting for it to cool down for the last year using exact temperatures, but the crockpot takes the "hovering" factor out of it.

a couple of yogurt tips:

1. I always add the dry milk, it makes it thicker, and adds some nutritional value.

2. I wrapped the towel around the crockpot for the incubation portion of the recipe and it worked fine, but once the weather starts getting colder, it might be hard to keep the yogurt as warm as it needs to be to thicken. If you have this problem, get the crockpot going in the late afternoon, and before it's ready to be unplugged preheat your oven to 200 degrees. Turn it off and then put the yogurt mixture in the oven. Leave the oven light on all night and it will maintain a perfect temp for those healthy bacteria to multiply!

3. for the first time, I used low-fat milk instead of whole milk. The yogurt turned out quite a bit thinner - but was still great for use with granola. You would just have to decide on your preference. I know that my family prefers the whole milk version, but sometimes you just use what you have!

I've been posting more recipes than normal lately, that's sure to come to an end. I'll post the tomato sauce I made (and very nearly burned) with our garden tomatoes soon...