Homemade Yoghurt

Yoghurt tastes good and is said to be a very healthy food. At home everybody loves it. Up to the end of last year we were consuming so much that that we were ending up with piles of plastic containers. I used some of them as pots for vegetable seedlings but at the end the pots still had to be thrown away. Furthermore buying so much yoghurt was expensive so I decided to try my hand at making my own yoghurt.

I found several websites with instructions for making yoghurt but they all required sophisticated equipment. I had no intention of spending money on such things but I found out that the principle for making yoghurt is very simple and once I understood that I realised that it was possible to make yoghurt very easily. Now I have been making my own yoghurt for more than six months.

Yoghurt is milk fermented by a certain kind of bacteria. The bacteria multiplies and does its work at a certain temperature and it does not like competition so no other bacteria is to be allowed in the milk during the fermentation.

These are my instructions for making home-made yoghurt:

Get a 1 litre glass jar with a tight-fitting lid and clean it thoroughly. Boil a little water in a small pan, pour the boiling water in the jar, put the cap on and shake it well to sterilise the jar. Throw the water away and pour small fresh plain yoghurt in it (one small container is enough). Warm a little less than 1 litre of long-life milk in the pan. The milk should be at a temperature between 43 and 45 degrees. I never use a thermometer for this -I touch the pan and when it is just about to become too hot to touch I remove it from the fire. Pour the milk into the jar, close the lid and shake it well. Remove the lid and place the jar in a warm place. I place it in the (electric) oven which has a very good insulation. Place a kettle full of boiling water in the oven. This will keep the oven at the right temperature. The yoghurt is ready six or eight hours later. Warm yoghurt is fantastic but it does not keep long so just close the lid and place in the refrigerator. The yoghurt should last for several days. I have never tested this because it always finishes in a very short time.
My method is very unconventional but somehow I always got it right. The milk used does make a difference. Full milk tastes better but is more fattening. Long-life milk gives better results. If you use the normal pasteurised milk I think you would have to heat it to a higher temperature and allow it to cool which I never do because I do not use a thermometer.

Once you have your first batch of yoghurt you can keep some for the next lot. To save time and energy I now produce two litres of yoghurt at a time and instead of boiling water in a kettle I time the process with the cooking of a pasta dish. I pour the boiling pasta water into another pan and use it to warm the oven.

I calculated that I am saving about Euro 200 per year and all it takes is about 5 minutes per week and a little planning.