The instructions I found were very confusing. Some said to
boil the milk while other said not – final temperatures were all over the place from 85-125 degrees. Some said using yogurt as starter was good while others said only commercial starter would work. The debate on whether or not to add powdered milk was fierce. None of this, however, was nearly as bad as the myriad of instructions on incubating it. After a mere 15 minutes of research I had heating pads, pilot lights, hot water bottles, ovens, blankets, and crock pots whirling through my head.
This was all so horribly complicated. I was looking for something easy and simple that I knew I could keep up in the long term. Then my dear friend Laura shared how she made yogurt for her son out of simply milk and yogurt. Her method did not even require a thermometer. Armed with this knowledge and having finally found an easy way to incubate it, I began to experiment and my own recipe resulted.
About a year ago, I finally mastered this process. You know, the kind of mastery where you know automatically which pan, jar, and tool to reach for and you simply go through the process almost without thinking. Since that time, my family has only eaten homemade yogurt except when traveling on long trips or during times of serious illness. We have saved a small fortune – part of which I have chosen to use to purchase organic milk to make the yogurt from because this was very important to some family members.
