Re: Making yogurt

[Guest guest]

Hi Carol. People have found various ways to get around using a yogurt maker,

such as keeping a light of the right wattage on in their ovens to maintain

the temperature between 101 and 110 F, or wrapping the container of

fermenting yogurt in an electric heating pad. I am doing so much cooking on

SCD that my oven never has 24 hours of free time available. Even if it did,

I would have to figure out the correct wattage of light bulb to get the

right temperature, and I would need to tape back the button that turns off

the light as soon as the oven door is closed.

None of my electric heating pads keeps a constant temperature for more than

a few hours at a time, so I don't consider that option viable unless I buy

yet another heating pad, assuming that I could find one that would keep a

constant temperature over a 24-hour period. I'd rather not bother with this.

Marilyn in New Orleans uses her dehydrator, which she can set to exactly 105

F and know that it will keep the container of fermenting yogurt at the

correct temperature. I don't have a dehydrator and don't have any immediate

plans to buy one.

So I bought the Yogourmet yogurt maker, which is supposed to keep the water

bath around the inner container at a constant temperature. However, I found

that the constant temperature my machine aims for is 120 F, which is too

high for the bacteria that ferment our yogurt.

The simplest way I read of to decrease the temperature was to buy a dimmer

switch, such as one would normally use for a table lamp. So, my husband, who

never turns down an opportunity to visit a hardware store, was happy to find

and buy me a dimmer switch last Saturday, the only day of the weekend that

stores were open. I forget how much it cost, but I don't think it was

expensive. The next time I made yogurt, I monitored the temperature, then

gradually slid the dimmer further and further along, until I got the water

temperature to stay constant at about 107 F.

I have marked that position on the dimmer switch, so that I can just use the

same setting every time I make yogurt.

I do have a slow cooker, but I haven't done any testing yet to see whether

it can keep a water bath at a constant temperature, and more importantly, at

a constant temperature between 101 and 110 F. If I test and find out that

this would be feasible, then I may consider the money I spent on the

Yogourmet machine to have been a waste.

There are less expensive yogurt making machines than the Yogourmet, and it

is possible that one of them actually keeps the fermenting yogurt in the

desired temperature range for the required time (24 or more hours). But I

didn't buy any of them, so I don't know.

I hope that people who have bought other brands of yogurt makers will

contribute information about their experiences.

I should also point out that the only labour-intensive portion of yogurt

making is at the beginning, when the (cow) milk has to be heated to about

200F to kill off all the micro-organisms, then cooled down to about 77 F so

that starter can be mixed into 1 cup of the heated-then-cooled milk, and

then mixed well with the rest of the milk. Once the water bath in the

machine is at the correct temperature, you can note the time, then ignore

the machine for 24 hours, except for periodic checks to verify the water

temperature.

Regards, Ellen in Toronto

" carol.stewart92 " wrote:

> Hello everyone,

>

> I have been experimenting with the SCD diet for 2 months with good

> results (until recently), but thought I could skip making my own

> yogurt. Now that I've decided to go whole hog, I am confused; it seems

> like the yogourmet is the machine of choice, but then people talk about

> needing a dimmer switch to change the electricity output...is there a

> simple way to make SCD yogurt? I have very little free time and the

> cooking demands of this diet are extreme.

>

> Thanks for your help!

>

> Carol