
I finally decided to go for it one day. I bought my full fat organic milk. I bought my freeze-dried yogurt culture. I washed the pots and some extra jars and then sat down to read through the instructions once more.
Mes petits pots de yaourt gives instructions for four methods: in a yogurt maker, in the oven, in a pressure cooker, and in a thermos (for emergencies [who has yogurt emergencies??]). Not having a yogurt maker or a pressure cooker, and considering the fact that I was not in mortal peril for lack of yogurt I decided to use the oven. Here's what the book has to say about that:
You can make your yogurt in the oven if you have an oven whose temperature you can control very precisely.
Carefully mix 1 litre of gently warmed milk with 1 yogurt culture. Divide into pots.
Put the yogurts into a 40 degree (C) oven. After two hours turn off the oven but no matter what don't open the door. Leave the yogurts in the oven without moving them for at least 6 hours, then refrigerate them. Serve cold.
Okay, fantastic, no big deal.
But then I looked in The Joy of Cooking, which had quite a lot to say on the matter of making yogurt, but it starts with this:
If you have ever eaten good, naturally flavored yogurt, you will try, as we have, to make it. We hope these directions will spare you some of our exasperating failures.Exasperating failures doesn't sound too promising. The method that Joy suggests is to build a "snug nest" contraption that retains the heat of the warmed milk. Maybe some day I'll buy the required inch-think foam rubber to do one up, but this time around I decided to stick with the oven method. My oven doesn't have a precise temperature gauge that goes low enough, however. I decided I would continue on...
After the prescribed two hours I turned off the oven and waited and waited and waited. When I opened it oven the yogurt looked pretty good. Some of the water had clearly evaporated, at least.
I haven't repeated the experiment but maybe next time I'll try to make the cozy nest and stick it in an off oven.
For now I'm working on getting the apartment all tidied up. Little brother is coming for a visit and at the end of August I'm moving up to a new job that will require me to have a good home office space. The professional organizer comes Wednesday to help me get sorted...