Making your own homemade plain yogurt

The advantages of making your own homemade yogurt are easy, healthier and cheaper! Firstly you just need to have some milk powder and spoonful of plain yogurt as the starter which will be the source of beneficial active cultures. You do not need to go to the store again to buy a new bottle of plain yogurt once you have your very own homemade yogurt as you can use it as the starter for the new batch and so on.

Make sure the bottle of plain yogurt which you going to purchase has the label saying containing "active live cultures" and also doesn't say "pasteurized". This is due to the process of pasteurizing would have kill off the good bacterias aka the active live cultures/probiotics present in the yogurt.These live cultures in yogurt are good for our body as their inhibit the growth of harmful bacteria. They are fermented in milk at warm temperature turning the milk into pudding-lie consistency as lactose is converted to lactic acid thus giving yogurt slight acidic flavour. Hence people with moderate lactose intolerant can digest yogurt without a problem as the process of turning milk into yogurt transforms the lactose into lactic acid, which means our body don't need to process the sugars in the original milk product.These good bacterias can also relieve the symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome and prevent urinary tract infections. Other than that yogurt is also a source of various beneficial nutrients such as alcium, protein, and vitamin B2. It also helps in restoring the balance of your body's yeast levels thus preventing yeast infections. It can help prevent urinary tract infections.

You can eat your yogurt plain, or mix with some fruits. Eat with your oatmeal or you can also make delicious smoothie! Yogurt is also said can be the substitute for sour cream in cooking/baking. So how do we make our homemade yogurt?


Ingredients


1. 1000 ml milk
2. 33 g milk powder
3. 50 ml plain yogurt with active cultures



Directions


1. Pour milk and milk powder into a large saucepan at medium heat. Stir the milk powder until fully dissolve.

2. Do not boil the milk mixture but heat it until you see small bubbles start to surface at the sides of the pan because we do not want to kill of our good bacterias. Or remove the mixture from the heat when the temperature of the mixture reaches 82 degree Celcius.

3.Cool the mixture until the temperature has dropped to 45 degrees Celcius.
Add in the plain yogurt to the milk mixture and mix well.

4.Pour the overall mixture into a thermos flask to maintain the temperature of 45 degree Celcius for up to 8-10 hours. Another trick to maintain this temperature is by simply setting your oven to the temperature of 45 degree Celcius while your yogurt is kept in jars/thermos. The longer time of fermentation allowed the more sour your yogurt will turn into.

5.Do not worry if you see a thin layer of yellowish liquid on the top but mix it back into the mixture. Voila and your yogurt is ready! You can keep your yogurt in the refrigerator for 1 to 2 weeks.

6.Save a little extra out as a starter for the next batch. But over time your homemade yogurt will start to lose it's potency as starter, hence every fifth batch you may want to use store-bought yogurt as starter. Do make sure it says ''live active cultures'' on the bottle!