FRO-YO!

Hello all!  And welcome back!  Apologies for the delay!  The wait has not been for naught though!  I have figured out how to make yogurt from scratch!  It was a momentous day for me.

Eons ago in November, my family kindly gifted me with the appropriate materials to make greek yogurt as that is the only kind of yogurt I will eat.  Between school, sports, and other various activities that tend to cause mini-existential crises, 5 months have passed, and I am now just using this lovely gift. 

Let me tell you, it was worth the wait!  It was so satisfying to create something using resources found fairly locally.  I purchased my milk from Mom's Organics, which sources its milk from local dairies.  This dairy happened to be called South Mountain Creamery.  It was bizarre--growing up with ultra-pasteurized, ultra-emulsifiedmilk, I never saw the fat separate.  It was enlightening, to say the least, when I started to pour that milk into the pan!  But that's what it needs to be like in order to make yogurt.  

Yogurt is made by the fermentation of the sugar, lactose, in milk by bacteria.  This, in a nutshell, makes the lactose digestible, for those lactose intolerants among us.  It's really very simple.  

 I suppose the main reason I wanted to try to make yogurt was the fact that I was tired of having yogurt every morning that came from who-knows-where, from cows in CAFOs (concentrated animal feedlot operation) who are kept pregnant for their entire lives for the purposes of obtaining milk.  I've never been one for inflicting pain--even on my little brother--and I decided that this was not for me.  So I stopped eating yogurt.  I started having soy milk with my granola in the morning, instead of yogurt.  I missed it, but my conscience was deafening.

However, being an incredibly persevering person, if I do say so myself, I decided to be self-sufficient.  Quite a novelty for my generation, I know.  And I must say, the results turned out beautifully!

Then I decided I wanted to go one step further.  Not only did I want the food I ingested, the stuff that keeps me alive mark you, to be sustainable, I also wanted it to be local.  That is to say, I wanted it to be found near where I live.  

Now, as I live in what is rapidly becoming suburbia, dairies are a little hard to come by.  So I expanded my definition of local.  I decided somewhere I could drive to would be acceptable.  South Mountain Creamery it was!

Then the magic happened.  The execution went swimmingly.  My mother found it on the internet and gifted that to me too--very nice that I didn't have to do my own research!  I started the process one night before I went to bed--Friday night, I am such a party animal--and finished it the next morning.

The yogurt was excellent!  Tangy and rich, with no taste of guilt.  It was dead easy too.  It gave me an entirely different perspective on one part of my quotidian diet.  I loved the enlightenment!  Hopefully you will too!

Homemade Greek Yogurt
Adapted from Happy Simple Living

• 1/2 gallon milk* – fat content of your choice (I used organic whole milk)-un or pasteurized-not ultra pasteurized 
• 2 to 3 tablespoons plain prepared yogurt (make sure it contains live, active cultures)
• cooking thermometer
• cheesecloth to fit 4 layers in a large strainer

To begin, pour all but 2 tablespoons milk into a double boiler or heavy-bottomed pan and turn the heat to medium. If using a double boiler, cover the milk. If the pot is directly on the burner, stir it and watch it very, very carefully so you don’t burn the bottom.

Heat the milk to 180 degrees F. It helps to have a candy thermometer so you can carefully watch the temperature, but when I went to fetch mine I remembered that the kids broke it the last time they made frosting so I used an instant-read thermometer instead.

Immediately remove the pot from the stove and carefully pour the hot milk into a glass or ceramic bowl or casserole dish. Put the dish on a cooling rack uncovered, and let the milk cool to between 105 and 110 degrees F. In our kitchen, this took about 50 minutes. (Note: remember to leave the dish completely uncovered at this stage, so the good bacteria from the air can start working their magic!)

While you’re waiting for the milk to cool, turn on your oven to the “warm” or “proof” setting, or to 150 degrees F. Combine the 2 tablespoons of milk you saved with the prepared yogurt in a small bowl and reserve. Resist the temptation to add more than 3 tablespoons yogurt. According to the Joy of Cooking, “you may wonder why so little starter is used and think that a little more will give a better result. It won’t. The bacillus, if crowded, gives a sour, watery product.” I used 2 1/2 level tablespoons of prepared yogurt and the resulting yogurt was thick, mild and creamy.

Once the milk has cooled to between 105 and 110 degrees, add in the yogurt-milk mixture and stir well to combine. (Don’t forget this important step.) Put the lid on the casserole and cover it with a dishtowel.

Turn your oven off, but now turn the oven light on. Just the light from the oven should keep the dish warm enough to enable the yogurt-making process. Put the towel-covered dish in the oven, making sure that the towel isn’t near the oven lightbulb, and leave the oven light on. If your oven light doesn’t emit any heat, you can alternately put the towel-covered dish on a heating pad set on “low,” or put it in a cooler with a snug-fitting lid and several jars of hot water to maintain the heat.

Leave the yogurt undisturbed for 7 or 8 hours, or overnight.

In the morning, carefully take the dish out, unwrap it and remove the lid, and check to see whether the milk has turned to yogurt. After eight hours, this is how our yogurt looks:  If your batch isn’t quite thickened, return it to the oven and check on it again in an hour. Once the yogurt is sufficiently thickened, you can stop at this stage if you want regular yogurt. Just stir the mixture and refrigerate it; you may need to pour off a little of the watery liquid. Don’t forget to turn off the light in your oven!

For creamy Greek yogurt, refrigerate the yogurt for at least three hours to allow it to completely cool and thicken. Line a large strainer with four layers of damp cheesecloth and find a bowl that the strainer will fit inside:  Put the strainer inside the bowl and pour the yogurt in; refrigerate for one hour. Pour out the liquid that has accumulated in the bottom of the bowl; this is the whey – that’s right, the very same delicacy Little Miss Muffet ate while she was sitting on her tuffet. You can save the whey and use it for cooking (a common use is as a liquid in homemade bread recipes) or discard it. Return the bowl to the refrigerator for one more hour, strain the liquid again and the yogurt should now look thick and creamy – like this:  Spoon it into a container and refrigerate for up to six days.

Remember to save a couple of tablespoons of your homemade yogurt so you can use it as starter for the next batch!