Making Greek Yogurt in the oven | Food Production and Preservation | Forums

So I was bored yesterday and decided to make some yogurt, from a sustainability stand point, once you have a batch going and you have a milk source, you can keep it going non stop

I had a gallon of milk left from the farm, and some yogurt left from the yogurt bread I made

so I dumped the milk into the double boiler

and stuck my candy thermometer into it

I turned the heat on low and slowly brought the milk up to 180 degrees

I immediately turned off the heat and set my thermometer into my crockpot

and poured the heated milk into it

I preheated the oven to 200

and after about 45 minutes the milk had cooled to 115 degrees

I took a half cup of warm milk and dumped a half cup of yogurt into it, you want to mkae sure your yogurt has live cultures in it

I mixed it well

and stirred it into the milk

I put the lid on the crockpot

and laid out two towels and set the crockpot in the middle

I wrapped the crockpot up tight

and turned off the oven and set the bundle of joy into the oven, all I wanted to do was get some ambient heat in the oven, you want to maintain a temp of 95-115 degrees in the milk to keep the milk warm for the 8-10 hours it takes to make yogurt. Another method is to turn the interior light on in the stove, it should keep the stove warm enough, or set a heating pad under the towels set on low, if you don't have a interior light

8.5 hours later I pulled the crockpot out of the oven

mmm, yogurt

I stuck it into the fridge over night to firm up

and enjoyed a nice cup of fresh probiotics for breakfast

I will strain it a little with coffee filters today and break it down into containers, saving a little as a starter for the next batch. Some people will just use the crockpot for the whole method, heating and cooling, some people say bringing the milk up to 180 to fast will leave to much of a sourness to the yogurt, but I don't mind it, another thing people will do is ladle the cooled milk/yogurt mixture into canning jars and set them in the oven so the milk turns to yogurt right in the jars and just stick them directly into the fridge, this creates a lot of yogurt which will have about a weeks shelf life, it can be frozen though. I'm going to mix some honey and dehydrated strawberries in some and freeze it for a late night snack, peace