Homemade Challenge: Yogurt

IHC: Yogurt

You will need:

• a yogurt maker

• 1 quart of milk (if using skim, you'll also need 1/2 cup of dry milk powder)

• 1 cup of Greek yogurt

I think that all new parents go through a “quest for perfection” phase, especially when it comes to feeding their infant. Nothing impure will ever touch my baby's lips! So we reach for the organic strained peaches, the whole grain organic cereals, the gluten-free teething biscuits. For a while I made MM organic pureed millet, whatever that was.

It was during this food-saint phase that I happened to glance at the ingredient list for a six-ounce container of organic strawberry yogurt and saw that it contained 32 grams of sugar. Through a complicated system of converting grams to teaspoons of volume based on the actual food, I figured out that these 32 grams equaled 7.674 teaspoons of sugar. That's a heck of a lot of sugar, even if some of it comes from the fruit.

I know what you're thinking – can't we just go metric?

In my quest to abolish sugar from my baby's diet, I researched yogurt makers and lucked out when I stumbled upon the Cuisipro Donvier Electronic Yogurt Maker for $20 at a discount store. It has paid for itself a hundred times over; if you figure that a typical six-ounce yogurt costs 70 cents, and that to make your own eight jars costs one quart of milk plus a starter yogurt –-

I'd calculate it but V-Man took apart my calculator. Trust me, it's way cheaper.

Making yogurt is simple. The hardest part is the planning: This is a twelve-hour process, so don't start it at 3 p.m. unless you like getting up at 3 a.m. Take one quart of milk (that's two pints, or four cups, or 32 ounces, or 946.352952 milliliters). If you're using skim, add a half cup of dry milk powder to help thicken your yogurt. Heat this over LOW heat, stirring constantly. And if anyone manages to do this and NOT scald the bottom of their pan, please let me know. 

With any luck, your yogurt maker came with a dummy-proof thermometer that has lines saying things like “Add starter here” and “Hot enough! Stop!” If not, here are the temps: heat the milk to 185 degrees, then cool it in a separate bowl to 110 degrees. Little old women in Greece say that it's cool enough when they can dip their fingers in for 20 seconds. I am not a little old Greek woman, so I need my thermometer.

The cooling process should take about an hour; less if you use a cooling bath.

Then it's time to add the starter. This just means adding live cultures to your mix; i.e. yogurt. Take your cup of Greek yogurt and put at least half of it in a new bowl. Add to this a cup of your milk and whisk it so that the yogurt dissolves in the milk. Then add the rest of the milk and mix well. Transfer this to your yogurt jars. I find it works well to fill each jar halfway, then to go back around and add more mix. This way, any starter yogurt that has collected on the bottom will make it equally into all the cups.

We're missing one of the cups... it's probably in the sandbox.

Now you just set your timer  for 9-10 hours and wait... and wait. The longer it “cooks,” the thicker your yogurt will be. Still, don't expect your yogurt to be the consistency or the taste of the store-bought stuff, unless you're planning on adding sodium citrate, malic acid, cornstarch, gelatin and pectin. 

What you can add, to counteract the tartness, are a whole host of good things: jam, fresh berries, wheat germ, chopped nuts, vanilla flavoring... or, if you're out of the food-saint phase like I am, chocolate chips.