A couple of different resources agreed that making your own yogurt is more cost effective than buying yogurt, so we decided to attempt it Sunday night.
The basic process was very simple, with minimal ingredients. We took a 1/2 gallon of milk, heated it up to 185 degrees, let it cool to 110, then added 1/4 cup of already prepared yogurt with active cultures.
Meanwhile, we heated our oven up to the lowest setting, then turned it off, and put the 110 milk and yogurt mixture in there with a towel over it overnight.
When we got up Monday morning, sure enough, we had made yogurt (as featured above)!
If we just wanted yogurt, it would have been a raving success... but Blake wanted Greek yogurt. So we had to strain the yogurt to make it thicker. We tried to strain it first with a cheesecloth, as the recipe recommended... but this did not work well for us at all. I don't know if we were supposed to have double layered it, or needed one with smaller holes or what, but let's just say that it didn't seem to stop the yogurt from going through... so it was just moving the yogurt, not straining it!
Another recommendation in the recipe was to strain it through a pillowcase. So, I tried to move the yogurt from the bottom of the strainer and the top of the cheesecloth to the top of the pillowcase to strain it. This worked much better, as what was left this time was just cloudy (from the whey) water and thicker yogurt on top.
This I attempted to scrape into a container.
Notice the use of the words "tried" and "attempted." I say this because between all of the moving of the yogurt, the half gallon worth of milk was reduced to two serving cups of yogurt. Not price effective. We suspect this is due to the large amount that got wasted between the cheesecloth, the bowl, and the pillowcase before the remaining amount was put into a container.
On the upside, it tasted good! We plan on attempting this again sometime, and seeing if we can get a larger yield, so it is actually worth it to do. I also need to look at the prices at the store again of milk and Greek yogurt to determine just how much we need to make before we start saving money.
Either way, it was an interesting experiment, and fun to see the yogurt reveal in the morning!
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