Yogurt 4

The fourth time through at making yogurt has gone without a hitch. The only failure has been the very first time, when I burned the milk, because I was using a cheap pan to heat the milk over the stove (the metal was too thin, and the bottom burnt well before the top had a chance to heat up). I’ve been using the microwave since then, sterlizing the milk directly in the yogurt making container. Ten or twelve minutes is enough. I bring the milk up above 200 degrees, which is probably overkill, actually. I should look up the kill temperatures for the unwanted bacteria.

I’m using a Salton 1 Quart Yogurt Maker, whose main function is to keep the mixture at 110 degrees so that the bacteria can do its work. The other piece of hardware is the digital thermometer. I’m using one with a Pyrex brand. Unfortunately, I’ve lost the instruction manual, and, while it does have a alarm, I have to monitor it myself, since I can’t get it to beep when the mixture gets down to a particular temperature. I’m sure it works fine when a mixture gets up to a temp.

The software is a quart of lowfat milk, some powdered milk (more protein to help stiffen the resulting yogurt), and half-a-cup of Stonybrook Farm plain yogurt, as the source of the live bacterial culture. At 110 degrees, everything takes about ten hours.

The resulting yogurt is a bit more liquid and creamy, less stiff, than Stonyfield Farm yogurt. They use pectin, which probably helps with the texture. Also, I think they drain off most of the liquid whey, which should tighten the remaining yogurt. I’m trying a new thing with this batch of yogurt, where I drained off some of the whey after I transfered the mix from the Salton container to a clean one-quart soup container for fridge storage. This was fairly easy: I folded a paper towel a couple of times to get a 4-fold thickness, held it to the container by hand, and just poured. The yogurt is only at 110 degrees, so holding it is no big deal.

The yogurt gets mixed various fruit jams for actual eating. Either that, or I use it in cooking, such as pancakes. This isn’t hard at all, and the main nuisance right now is my inability to get the digital thermometer to beep correctly, so I don’t have to keep looking at the temperature every few minutes.

2 Responses to “Yogurt 4”

  1. Shay Logan Says:

    Did you find a thermometer that had an alarm on the way down? I am looking for one that does that?

  2. Cheng Says:

    I didn’t find one, but, regarding yogurt making, I’ve realized that there’s a lot of “slack” in the process. Nowadays, I basically heat up the milk in the microwave (1000W, I think) for about 3 or 3.5 minutes, then I let the milk cool on the counter for about an hour before putting in the starter. One doesn’t have to be precisely at 110F, etc. It’s sufficient to feel the side of the container, and if it’s warm to the touch but not hot, then it’s safe to put in the starter. The yogurt making failures I’ve had have to do with killing the starter in too-hot milk, I think, and a touch test is good enough.

    My brother once told me that he made yogurt in college with a friend from India, using traditional technique. No thermometers were involved. And, thinking about it, the process has to be very forgiving, since people have been doing this for thousands of years, long before precision instruments were invented.