Earlier in the year, our family developed an expensive food habit: yogurt.  We were using yogurt on cereal at breakfast, for snacks, in smoothies.  In fact, we were easily spending over $60 a month just on yogurt (normally Stonyfield and Chobani).  Since we have all our own milk, we decided to start making some yogurt on our own from goat’s milk.  It’s very easy.

1. Pasteurize the milk.  While we drink it raw, we pasteurize it for yogurt to ensure only the desired culture grows.

2. Add 3-4 tablespoons of plain yogurt from the store per quart of milk.  (We tried purchased cultures, but didn’t like the flavor and for the cost, it’s cheaper to just get a little from the store.

3. Pour into pint jars. We sterilize the jars first because when we didn’t, other cultures started to grow after about 3 weeks of storage.

4. Load into Excaliber Dehydrator.

5. Cook at 100F for 6-8 hrs.

6. Refrigerate.

The consistency is much more liquid than store-bought yogurt, similar to European yogurt.  Anna is fine with that. I found that it was only a mental issue to get past and now enjoy the yogurt just fine.  Alex and Vicki stay away, but they were really only eating the yogurt in smoothies anyways. Amanda will eat whatever Anna and I eat, so she’s happy.