You don’t need to own a dairy cow to have homemade whole milk yogurt. Making yogurt from store bought milk is worth the effort. Not only is it sometimes hard to source whole milk, naturally sweetened yogurt, it can be quite expensive. For the price of one gallon of milk, you get four quarts of yogurt. Sounds like a bargain to me.
Yogurt may sound a little intimidating but it is probably the easiest way to process milk. There is very little hands on time and almost no clean up. You will need a few basic supplies, all of which you probably already own.
- 4 quart canning jars with lids
- a thermometer
- pot large enough to fit the canning jars
- 1 gallon of whole milk
- store bought quality whole milk yogurt to use as a starter (You will only need this for the first batch. From then on you can use your own yogurt as a starter for the next batch.)
To begin, fill the four quart jars with whole milk. Leave enough room to later add a heaping tablespoon of yogurt to each jar. Screw the lids on each jar and place them in the pot. Fill the pot up with water just until the water level is equal with the milk in the jars. Heat the milk to 180 degrees using a low setting. Heating the milk kills any bacteria that might compete with the yogurt culture and changes the milk protein’s structure in a way that allows for the smooth creamy texture that yogurt has.
Once the milk has reached the desired temperature, let the milk to cool to 108 degrees. This will take a while, it usually takes about two hours for me. After it has cooled, add the heaping tablespoon of yogurt to each jar.
Now you want to keep the milk at that temperature for 24 hours. There are two options for this. The first is to bundle the pot in a beach towel or table cloth and place it in the oven. Leave the oven off, but turn on the oven light. The light will help to hold the temperature.
The second approach to incubating the homemade whole milk yogurt, is to use a large cooler. You would place the whole pot in the cooler and still wrap the pot with a towel. I haven’t had to use the cooler. I just pick a day that I won’t need the oven for baking.
After twelve hours the yogurt will be ready to keep in the fridge. The yogurt will be thin at first but will thicken up more in the fridge. Sweeten with honey or whichever natural sweetener you prefer. Oh and the best part is that there isn’t much clean up at all since the pot only had water in it.
