Homemade Yogurt

I love homemade yogurt, especially when it's mixed with fresh fruit or homemade jam and topped with nuts or granola.  I am happy I decided to acutally post and not pretend like I can remember exactly how I did this for the next time I want to make yogurt.  Now, I can come straight to my blog and find it.

I made my best yogurt ever yesterday. I used greek plain yogurt instead of the regular plain yogurt which I have always used before.  I only used it because I really really wanted to make a new batch of homemade yogurt and it was the only kind that the store I was in that day had in a small container that wasn't flavored. I think it was Yoplait brand. I used 6 cups skim milk, 1/2 cup powdered milk, and the whole small container of yogurt. This time, there was no whey left floating on top; it all got absorbed into the yogurt. And the texture was very smooth and creamy like store bought yogurt, not grainy at all.


6 cups skim milk
1/2 cup powdered milk
6 oz plain greek yogurt (Yoplait)

Warm milk in microwave to 175 F. 2 min each time with about 1 min to 30 second break and stirred in between each cycle. Once the milk is warmed, stir in the powdered milk.  Cool milk to 105 F (I put min in the fridge to speed up the process). Add 1 cup of the warm milk to yogurt and gently stir until combined. Add 1 more cup of warm milk to yogurt and gently stir until combined. Pour milk/ yogurt mixture into the rest of the milk. Pour into 3 pint and 1 half pint jars with lids (or whatever combination will fit in your crock pot). Put the jars in the crock pot, fill with warm water to the rim of the pint jar. Alternate crock pot between warm and off for 6-8 hours. I think I did warm for hour then off for hour cycles, but not really regularly just whenever I happened to walk through the kitchen and think about it. 

Ideally, you want the water temperature to stay consistent between 100-110 F, so you can put your thermometer in the water and use it to help you know when to cycle the crock pot on and off.