Experiment

This is my latest experiment: home made yogurt. Now some of you may ask themselves: who makes yogurt? At least, that's what I asked myself when a friend told me last year how easy it was to make. I thought to myself- well, that's nice if you're a stay at home mom. At the time, I was barely able to hold my stuff together, trying to not quit my job with an eight month old who had not slept more than 4 hours at a stretch ever. And whose usual sleep pattern involved 1-2 hour cycles of napping and feeding. I had no idea this level of exhaustion existed before I had a child.

However, fast forward a year, and some serious catching up in sleep deficit, here I am, making yogurt myself. It is really, seriously, easy. All you need is a gallon of milk, a thermometer, some clean jars, and a camping cooler. Oh, and of course your "starter culture", which is nothing but a cup ful of yoghurt with live yogurt cultures (I used the plain one from Dannone- it even has some funny label saying that the live cultures in the yogurt comply with standards set by the American yogurt association... that makes me chuckle) . Then, all that you neeed to do is

1. Fill camping cooler with 120 F warm water (close the lid, so it stays at 120- don't go above 130, or the yogurt dies)

2. Heat milk to 120 F (don't let boil, that changes the taste)

3. Whisk in starter yogurt (make sure you mix well)

4. Pour hot milk-yogurt mix into clean jars, set into the 120 F water in the cooler and keep there over night.

5. The next morning, eat yogurt for breakfast.


As always when working with milk, you want to be as clean as possible. The dishwasher is ok for the jars, but I boiled the wisk and thermometer, because they'd been in the drawer for a while. Keep your hands clean and don't touch anything that will touch the milk. If your yogurt is firmed up and sour the next morning, you can be pretty sure that those lactobacilli did their thing. Just as with sauerkraut, the low pH kills or inhibits most pathogenic bacteria.

This yogurt turned out a bit less solid than most store bought products (apparently, stabilizers such as gelatine get added to yogurt a lot to make it firm). I love to eat it plain, or with a drop of honey or jam. My daughter loves it, too. It may be coincidence, but over the last week, she has started to say "dodu", for yogurt (came home,went straight to the fridge, pointed at it, and, with commanding voice, "dodu!"). I guess I will be making it again.