It is a Saturday, and Jon is out on a job. I have almost a full gallon of raw milk from Robinson Farm. I have some plain Greek yogurt (the only plain yogurt in the store with active cultures), a stove with a pilot that always stays on so the oven, when turned off, is the right temperature for fermenting, and I have a large cup of coffee. Let's see how this goes!
3. I put 3.5 cups of milk into the top, with the water boiling on the bottom. At 185 degrees F, I kept it at that temp. for a few minutes, stirring every minute or so.
I've been taking my time doing research to make sure I get this right. Not only do I NOT want to waste milk, but I am too excited for it to not work!
So here are my step by step instructions, with photos, and comments on how it goes!
1. Clean the kitchen. Its been two days for me (I know, I know, but I had a migraine). You need space for your mise en place!
2. (I forgot I had to mail a bill, so I had to run to the post office). Its 11am and I'm finally ready to begin!
I put together a bain-marie (hot water bath) with two pots. It took me a while to get the right sizes. I added enough water to the larger pot so that it was halfway up the smaller pot. Then, I put the spoon and thermometer inside, with the smaller pot on top, and let it boil to sterilize everything. I used the tongs to dip the smaller pot's lid in the boiling water, too.
I put together a bain-marie (hot water bath) with two pots. It took me a while to get the right sizes. I added enough water to the larger pot so that it was halfway up the smaller pot. Then, I put the spoon and thermometer inside, with the smaller pot on top, and let it boil to sterilize everything. I used the tongs to dip the smaller pot's lid in the boiling water, too.
(I ended up using a bigger pot on the bottom)
I'm going to pasteurize the milk for my first go at making yogurt, just because I want to be sure I'm doing everything right. Also, I got this milk out of a farmstand, so it is not the absolute freshest. When I do make 'raw milk yogurt', I will get milk that has been milked that day.
4. Took it off the heat.
5. Cold water bath, until it reached 115 degrees F.
6. Here is where I made a mistake- I added two heaping tablespoons of the plain yogurt right to the pot, but I should have put it in the jars. The ratio that I was using was 3.5 cups of milk to 2 heaping Tbsp of yogurt, but I decided that in order to get everything mixed evenly, I poured the milk equally into the two jars, then added 1 more Tbsp to each jar, shaking it. I hope it works! I also forgot that I needed 2 clean jars to put it in, until the temp. was about 120 and I needed something immediately. Thank goodness I had two clean sauce jars on top of the fridge (all my mason jars are kept under the sink, where there has been a mouse problem...)
7. I put the jars into my oven (the pilot always stays on, and I previously recorded the temp. to be about 114 in there, so it should work). No peeking! Now I am going to wait a little over 6 hours, checking back at 6:30 tonight.
I also just realized that I can't use the stove today, or the temp. will be too high for incubating, unless I wait until after 6:30 to start. Oops! I guess this is why some people do this overnight...Pizza for dinner!
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