Alright, a little melodramatic for the first attempt at making yogurt with a four-year old but the these opportunities are important for teaching Olivia about perseverance, vigilance, and reflection.
What happened?
Following the recipe we made only a change to the starter yogurt and used Fage. Waiting the three hours resulted in simply warm yogurty milk in mason jars. Olivia had gone to bed by this point so I made the call to dump all the yogurt except one jar. My intention was to show Olivia what had happened and discuss the attempt and failure. In checking other recipes it seemed that Dr. Fankhauser's three hours was a little short. I left the remaining jar in the heated cooler for a total of ten hours.
It did thicken up in ten hours but it wasn't like anything described in various recipes. Olivia and I took a careful look at the yogurt, tasted it, and followed the remaining step which was to refrigerate the yogurt for eight hours. After eight hours it was no different in thickness but was cold.
Judging from Dr. Fankhauser's troubleshooting tips and Internet searches yogurts like Fage often sit on the shelf too long at the store which reduces the amount of live cultures in the yogurt. Dr. Fankhauser recommends Dannon and others did as well. However, more recipes suggested Stonyfield brand plain yogurt.
What's next?
We are both committed to giving this another shot using a better starter, checking it at three hours but being prepared for ten to twelve hours of incubation, and hoping for better results. So, the promised pictures, we're going to post will be of the successful batch. We'll include the detailed steps and recipe too.
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