Homemade Yogurt

I am very pleased and grateful to say that my very first attempt at making yogurt turned out successful. I've been wanting to try it for a long time but was a bit intimidated by the necessity to keep it warm for a long time. I don't have a yogurt maker here and I was afraid that the process was going to be much too involved to be practical for me to accomplish.

That's when I ran across this recipe, which not only takes only about 3 hours to make, but uses a crockpot to maintain the warmth. Genius! I thought. And it was.

I also read this recipe, which I found had some useful additional hints. The only things I really altered from the first recipe are that I added a tiny bit of sugar to help in the fermenting process and I doubled the yogurt starter. Next time, I will try it without the additional sugar and see how things go. I'd like to have a non-sweet yogurt, as it is definitely more versatile.

We tried it this morning and it was very good. I blended it with some fresh strawberries. Interestingly enough, the yogurt was thicker out of the jar but when I blended it, it turned quite liquid and worked well as drinkable yogurt. Not a problem, since we are used to drinking our yogurt here.

All in all, I was happy with my first attempt and I look forward to experimenting with this further in the future.