A Tennessee Homestead: Homemade Yogurt Anyone?

I am been having a mini food revolution as of late, I am trying to rid my diet of processed foods most of you already know that but its pretty hard to do, I am sure you know that too. I decided last week that when I went grocery shopping I would only buy products with five ingredients or less, it was not as difficult as I thought, but I still had to leave alot on the shelf I would have normally bought. For instance, cinnamon rolls, my kids love them, too many ingredients though, solution break out one of the many cookbooks I got as wedding gifts. Making cinnamon rolls was really pretty simple, I made a basic pizza dough rolled it out as if I was going to make pizza then mixed some butter with cinnamon and sugar and spread it on the dough. Then all you do is roll it up or and cut it into rolls or leave it whole and with that you have cinnamon rolls, well bake them of course too.

Anyway to my topic at hand, we love yogurt, yogurt is good for you but the ingredients are far from always the best for you. One yogurt that I looked at had 15 ingredients, and 13 of the ingredients I would not cook with in my kitchen so I really do not need them. I have made yogurt plenty of times before and its pretty good. Homemade yogurt is runnier than store yogurt and is pretty tart so you might need to sweeten it with honey or add some fruit, I know I do. I have two recipes for you on how to make yogurt, the first will be the yogurt I make with a culture I purchase from New England Cheese Making Supply and the second I will use plain yogurt from the grocery. Secondly, I finally broke down and bought a yogurt incubator to use but I used to use canning jars and a crock pot, I will explain that in my directions.

Warm 1-2 quarts of milk to 180 degrees
Once warm remove from heat and let cool to 110 degrees
Add the packet of yogurt culture, let stand for two minutes so the culture can rehydrate
After two minutes stir well.
Place the yogurt in your jars to go in the incubator or place the yogurt mixture into canning jars(half pints or pints work best) and place them in a crock pot on the warm to low setting that's 3/4 of the way full of water. You can also put the yogurt mixture in an insulated thermos. It needs to be a container that can keep the yogurt warm so the cultures can grow.
Leave the jars of yogurt in the incubator or the crock pot for 6-12 hours, you will have to check occasionally after 6 hours to see if it is to your desired thickness. I usually let mine go for 7 hours.
When done place in the refrigerator to cool and it is ready. You can do anything with this yogurt you would do with yogurt you would buy from the store. Please remember you might not like the flavor you might need to sweeten it. I like to use honey to sweeten or use some of my homemade jam for sweet with fruit:)

If you need to use plain yogurt you need to heat and cool the milk just like the first recipe. Once it is cooled to 110 degree pour this mixture into the mason jars or thermos. To each mason jar stir in 1 tbsp of plain yogurt, mix well. If using a thermos put in 5-6 tbsp of plain yogurt, mix well. That's pretty simple to do!

A neat note about yogurt is that when you go to make it again you can use some of your own plain yogurt to start the next batch of yogurt!

I hope you enjoy it really is easy, maybe a little time consuming but well worth it!