Homemade Yogurt-Made with REAL Milk

Homemade Yogurt-Made with REAL Milk

OK. Lisa, this one is for you.  :-)  This is so easy, you won't believe it.  But do remember the texture is slightly different with REAL milk (a.k.a. Raw Milk).  The end texture is more of a jello/yogurt texture, but oh so delish.  And I don't know....maybe the texture is a little different for me, as the kids played with the temperature in our refrigerator and froze the entire gallon of REAL milk that I used for this yogurt (of course after thawing it).  Lol  Oh, well...life with kids, right?!  :-)  Time will tell if the next batch will be different in texture.  I will let you know.  Here we go....

Homemade Yogurt-Made with REAL Milk
3 3/4 cups REAL milk (a.k.a. RAW milk)
1/4 cup of plain, whole organic yogurt (THHE recommends Seven Stars) I used organic Oikos Greek
1 glass quart jar (washed and dried), with lid and ring
Stainless steel sauce pan
Cooking thermometer (I have one with a cord and temp wand that I bought at Wal-Mart, when I was still shopping there, that I use all of the time)
Your oven
2-3 dish towels
1 rubber band

Scoop 1/4 cup of the plain organic whole yogurt into a clean, glass quart jar.  Seven Stars is the best brand you can find at the health food stores, after you make this batch save 1/4 cup from this batch so you can use in your next batch as your starter yogurt.

Warm the REAL milk in your stainless steel sauce pan on the stove to between 105-115F.  No enzymes or nutrition will be lost and the warmed milk allows the yogurt culture to take better than just room temperature REAL milk.  And at this temperature the milk remains REAL and RAW.

After your milk reaches 105-115F pour about 1/2 cup of the warmed milk into the glass jar and mix with the store yogurt.  Mix gently, you are not trying to be a blender, just gently swirl your spoon around in there, introducing the warmed milk to the starter yogurt.

Then pour the remaining warmed milk into the glass jar, stir gently and close the lid tightly.

Wrap the glass jar in your hand towels, leaving the bottom unwrapped and secure with rubber band.

Stick your wand from your cooking thermometer into your oven door, shut the door on the cord and preheat the oven at 170F (or the lowest temperature your oven goes) until your thermometer reads 105-115F, then turn oven off.  You will get the knack of this over time.  When you turn the oven off the temp will continue to rise.  I let it preheat for about 30 seconds and turned the oven off and watched to see what temp the thermometer was going to stop on, then turned it back on to 170F, if needed.  (If you don't have a cooking thermometer, preheat your oven at 170F for 30 second to 1 minute, then turn oven off.  Come back every 3 hours and do this again.)

Open your oven door and place your yogurt wrapped up in your hand towels, secured with rubber band inside your oven and shut door.  Depending on when you started making your yogurt, you want to try to maintain this temp until you go to bed.  Then let it sit in the oven over night (don't worry about maintaining the temp while you are asleep...just let it go.  :-) )

(Another way to incubate this is in your microwave.  This is from the Healthy Home Economist.  Wrap up the glass jar in your dish towels, secure with rubber band and place it in your microwave, leaving the light on for 24 hours, DO NOT TURN the microwave on!  Just turn the light on.  I do not have that option so I used the oven method.)

Then when you get up in the morning, you have a couple of choices.  1. Put the glass jar in the refrigerator and allow it to firm up or 2. Use a clean, never bleached receiving blanket...line a colander with the blanket, place colander into a large bowl to catch the whey and add the yogurt to the blanket inside the colander.  Let it sit in the refrigerator until desired consistency is reached.  Scrape out the yogurt and store it in a glass container.  Save your whey in another glass container and use it in one of the 10,000 ways you can use whey.  Lol

Enjoy!!!

*Adapted from www.justtryingtolivebetter.blogspot.com and www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com  (a.k.a. THHE)