Home-made yogurt: we do!

For a start question: Do you eat yogurt? I, for example, am not excited about what is on sale in supermarkets. As a rule, it is quite liquid substances with strong fruit tastes. Of course, there is a wish for something more natural. "Buy yogurt without additives" - you will tell me. Yes, tried, the taste was not pleasant. But again there was no wish to pass to yogurts of bright crimson or peach colors. Therefore if you did not decide to do yogurt independently yet, but you want themselves to secure as much as possible against artificial additives and dyes, I advise not to refuse purchased yogurts without additives. Their taste can be "painted" by means of a pinch of vanilla, the natural frozen berries or natural syrup of own preparation. It will be your first step to natural yogurt after which you precisely will understand that you wish to consume only a natural product.

Why home-made yogurt is necessary?
Really, on its preparation a lot of time will leave and it is not so simple. Besides, there are doubts that it will "work", and the phrase "growing bacteria" frightens at all. But I will try to dispel all these fears and fears. Here pluses of home-made yogurt:
+ There is some economy of means though I on the first place never put this principle. But the fact is that home-made yogurt is cheaper than purchased.
+ The main reason is, of course, a naturalness. I am responsible for ingredients of home-made yogurt. And matter not only in what we eat. Yogurt recipes for a face and hair are quite effective, but there is no wish to put to themselves on the person a product which is made by million circulations on big production.
+ Any waste in the form of the empty plastic containers from yogurt polluting the environment.
+ Each cup of purchased yogurt contains about 45 gr. sugar, in liter home-made yogurt of sugar no more than 10-12 gr. Consumption of sugar decreases considerably!
We continue?

What is the time all this will borrow?
Your active participation about 15 minutes will be required, but one or one and a half hours yogurt will prepare itself, without you though your presence will be required.

Main stages
- Heating of milk for sterilization (up to 85 degrees).
- Cooling (up to 38-49 degrees).
- Addition of "serum".
- 4-24 more hours yogurt reach readiness (at a warm temperature), the incubatory period.

What will be required:
- Clean glass jars
- Milk. In principle, any approaches, but I use organic, I buy in the market. However if there is no such opportunity, at least make sure that store milk not ultra heat-treated and not fat-free.
- The thermometer if is.
- A big pan or a high basin where you will heat banks.
- 2 tablespoons of simple yogurt on each liter of milk. It will work as serum. Yogurt has to be fresh, have marking "with live and active cultures", helping work of intestines. Of course, without any impurity and additives.
- Hours.
- Towel.

Step 1. We prepare banks. They have to be absolutely dry and clean. If are very scrupulous, you can drench banks with boiled water to be sure of their purity.

Step 2. Put a towel on a bottom of a big pan. On it – clean dry banks. In banks pour milk, without reaching top about 2-3 cm. Accurately fill space of a big pan with water that water did not get to banks.

Step 3. Finish milk in banks prior to boiling when bubbles begin to be formed.



Step 4. Put in the boiling water the thermometer and a spoon for hashing. Several minutes are enough – and they are sterilized (the spoon is useful to you later, and the thermometer now). Now make fire of average intensity or low, but that swirling continued. Place the thermometer in one of jars with milk when temperature is 85 degrees, it is time to switch off fire and to cover banks with covers. If there is no thermometer – it does not matter. You watch when the skin appears, it is the sign that milk of already necessary temperature. Remove a skin, switch off fire and close banks covers.

Step 5. It is necessary to cool banks. I do not advise to put in the refrigerator, it will increase in it temperature that is not really good for other products. It is possible to cool in the container with ice, in a bathtub with cold water and if on the street winter – that in a cold cellar or on a balcony. We need to cool milk to 38-49 degrees. I do so: I cover all pan with banks a towel and I take out in a cold corridor (the benefit, I live in own house).

Your purpose – to receive milk with the temperature about 38-39 degrees because the incubation occurs between 37 and 49 degrees (if milk is too hot, over 50 degrees, bacteria in it will die). 38 degrees – optimum anyway. If there is no thermometer, then on feelings here such hint: on a cool window sill milk cools down up to this temperature approximately in 90 minutes, in a sink in cold water – in 20 minutes. If you too cool milk, you will need to warm up it again.

Step 6. We add "serum". On each liter of milk – 2 tablespoons of usual yogurt, it will also carry out a role of a peculiar serum which will start the mechanism of reproduction of the necessary bacteria. By a clean spoon it is added to banks, carefully we mix. More yogurt does not need to be put, you remember, you deal with live organisms, and milk will "be too overpopulated" by these organisms, they will interfere with each other to develop.

Step 7. Again cover banks with covers. Now it is necessary to keep as long as possible banks warm. It is better to wrap up a warm blanket, a towel, in several layers, it will help to keep heat longer. Take care also of that banks were placed in the warm place, the best – to leave them in kitchen, on the top shelves, there always warmly. Some advise to keep banks on a water bath, then it will be necessary to watch constantly that around cans water did not cool down, the temperature difference influences perniciously for live bacteria necessary to us.

Step 8. The incubation can proceed from 4 to 24 hours. Than the period is shorter, especially sweet yogurt turns out. Than more long – especially tart. Low temperatures also do yogurt sweet, and high – tart. I most of all like taste when yogurt is incubated in heat from 4 to 8 hours. Six hours – the most tasty, eight too still tasty, but six after all are pleasant to me most of all. Though to choose this indicator to you. 24 hours – at all were not pleasant, as well as 16, but it is only my personal opinion. Though after 24 hours yogurt was quite dense, it was pleasant.


So home-made yogurt after an incubation looks, yellowish color and is a little serum from above. It can be merged, it is useful on next time when you do a new portion of yogurt.


At the left there is a 8-hour yogurt, and on the right – 16-hour (more dense, as you can see).

Step 9. We put cups in the refrigerator. Yogurt considerably will thicken when it is cooled. It is better to stir up several times it after cooling for uniform consistence. Yogurt is ready!



Do not forget to leave several tablespoons of ready yogurt on future ferment, it will be your "serum". If yogurt begins to turn out thinnish, buy new "serum" in shop. I buy time in 2 weeks.

Home-made yogurt can be used and as purchased (that is, to eat in the mornings, with addition of fruit or spices) and also it can replace with ease in recipes sour cream (to become gas station for salads, to add to soups). I love the home-made yogurt with vanilla. On liter 1 teaspoons of vanilla and a quarter of a teaspoon of sugar. You can add home-made yogurt to dough for pastries (cookies or pancakes).