Homemade Yogurt

This is how we make yogurt at home. It's really simple and the yogurt we get is creamy and very tasty. You need a small jar of plain yogurt to start the process. The best quality possible, of course. From that initial culture of bacteria, we could in theory produce as much yogurt as needed simply by using a small portion of each batch to inoculate the next one. In practice, it seems that this does not work if you start with a commercial yogurt, only if you use a heirloom yogurt starter culture. With commercial yogurt you get away with 5 or 6 batches of yogurt before you need to restart the process with store bought yogurt. We can't attest to this theory as we never did so many uninterrupted batches.

Here's what we need:

- 1 liter of full fat milk
- 1 plain yogurt
- 1 one liter kilner jar
- thermometer

and how you do it:

- this is an overnight process, so it's best to start it the night before you need the yogurt. Put the milk in a pan and slowly heat it to 85 degrees centigrade. Use a whisker to stir the milk so that it does not stick to the bottom of the pan. Let the milk cool to 43 degrees centigrade either naturally or by placing the pan inside a bowl of cold water. Whisk the milk to speed up the process. Once it reaches that temperature, vigorously whisk in a couple of tablespoons of plain yogurt. Transfer the milk to the kilner jar. It may be a good idea to put some hot water in the jar beforehand to warm it up, and then throw it way before adding the milk. The idea is that you don't want the milk's temperature to considerably drop below the 43 degrees centigrade mark once it comes in contact with the jar. Close the lid and tightly wrap an old thick sweater around the jar. Place the jar inside a cabinet or some other place where it will not be disturbed. The next morning, it should look like the picture below. Put it in the fridge and enjoy it plain or mixed with honey or homemade jams!