Lately I've been pondering over and reading some seriously disturbing articles on the ever-rising price of oil, our dependency on fossil fuels, the shrinking quality of raw foods, and the changing display of available foodstuffs in the grocery store. Two things have especially caught my eye today: Breyers has ceased production of yogurt (gasp!) and there was only 1 flavor of Dannon Yogurt on the shelf - coffee. Now, I heart coffee like many people do, especially Kona coffee which as we all know IS the true nectar of humanity. But coffee yogurt? To me that's like turnip cake, or string bean jello. I'm sure there are some people who thrive on it, but for the rest of us, that's just NOT right.
Anyway, so I did a lil net surfin' and what do I find? Why, you can make yogurt at home in your very own crockpot! Who knew?? The first place I found this was on The Simple Dollar - a blog I follow where I get lots of "do it yourself" advice. This led me to the instructions on A Year of Slow Cooking where there was a bit more detail (to satisfy the overly-analytical side of me). Then I found this totally awesome video on YouTube!
I'm almost to the 2 and 1/2 hour mark in the instructions. I'm going to follow the original recipe using only whole milk and 1/2 cup of starter (plain) yogurt - I'll be leaving off the powdered milk for this batch. We'll see how it ends up later tonight!
Update at 8pm: Peeked at the crockpot - smells like yogurt!!
Update at 11pm: It worked! It isn't as thick as store-bought full-fat yogurt but the taste is MUCH smoother and it's most definitely yogurt! I didn't even cringe at the taste of warm yogurt. It's yummy! It made enough yogurt to fill 2 large yogurt cups and another container. In the morning I'll check to see if it thickened more in the fridge overnight. Best part: WAY cheaper than store bought and NO additives or preservatives. I'm psyched!
Next batch I think I will try adding the powdered milk.
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