OOh, I made Greek Yogurt Saturday per my instructions here. It worked better than ever! I tried a faster method but still used the slow cooker for finishing. To speed things up I poured the gallon of milk into a large stock pot and heated it on medium until it was 115 degrees. I used a candy thermometer to keep tabs on it. Then I removed it from the heat and wisked in about 1/2 cup of plain yogurt until it was smooth. Meanwhile I had my slow cooker plugged in on high to preheat. I turned off the slow cooker and poured the warm milk mixture in. I wrapped the lidded slow cooker in towels to insulate and left it all day. Oops, then I forgot about it and left it all night.
The next morning, I lined a colander with one layer of flour sack tea towel and placed it over a large bowl. I poured the yogurt in to drain and went to church. When I got back, I had 1 1/2 quarts of creamy lovely Greek Yogurt and the rest of the gallon was clear, thick whey. We are usin the whey for baking, and I’m trying to slow down on the yogurt….but drizzled with a tiny bit of agave, it’s like heaven. How fast is too fast to eat an entire batch of Greek yogurt?
But I digress. The real reason I am writing is to show you how easy it is to make sprouted wheat flour. Fit Yummy Mummy recommends only eating wheat in sprouted forms. That is a little expensive around here so I tried doing it myself. It’s not an instant process, but not hard and takes very little hands on time.
First, I soaked my grains in a large bowl of water for 8 hours. I recommend starting with a bowl that will hold your wheat plus twice as much water.
Once the wheat was soaked, I lined a colander with a tea towel and poured the soaked wheat in and rinsed. Then I placed everything over a bowl to drip throughout the day without making a mess.
Twice a day for 3 days I rinsed through the towel and let it drip in the bowl. After the 3rd day I could see a little activity on the business end of the seed. That meant it was ready.
There won’t actually be green shoots or anything, just a little sign of activity. after that, I spread the wheat thinly onto cookies sheets and set it on the counter to dry. The wheat that was only 1 layer thick dried after 24 hours. The wheat that was too thickly layered took forever to dry! I dried some of it in the oven at 170. But I recommended only sprouting what will fit in the number of cookie sheets you have.
I was really worried about getting the wheat dry enough to grind to not mess up my machine. I found it was fairly easy to “feel” how dry the wheat was. Dry wheat is light and clink clanks when sprinkled on the tray. Damp wheat feels cold and heavy.
I’m hoping to find time to make some sprouted wheat pitas and tortillas this evening.
Just so you know, too. It took me a week to sprout the flour and I still haven’t baked with it. So I’m not super-mom by any stretch. Just taking small baby steps and fitting in the work when I can. And yes, still feeling completely overwhelmed with life in general.
By the way, We are moving! We close on our new house tomorrow!!!! I’ll take some photos to post when we get possession.
Hi Angela!
I made a batch of yogurt via your first instructions and it turned out delicious! It is the best yogurt I have ever eaten, so creamy and a tiny less tangy than the store boughten variety. I eat a lot of yogurt, and my kids love it too, and now we can actually afford to eat it. 😀
I just finished putting together a batch from your new, quicker instructions and it is now sitting in the slow cooker. I can’t wait to try it!
Hmmm . . . my yogurt with your quicker recipe is not thickening properly. Its been 7 hours and it is still very runny, not much thicker than milk. I’m thinking perhaps the problem is that I did not cool the milk down before adding the starter yogurt. I heated it to 180 to kill off the bacteria and then just pulled it off the heat and whisked in the starter yogurt as per your instructions. Although I see now when I look at your instructions that you only heated yours to 115 degrees. That actually doesn’t seem very safe? I’m still new to this yogurt making business. Anyway, I’m thinking I should have set the pot of yogurt to cool until it was lukewarm and then added the starter yogurt, then left it in the slowcooker wrapped in towels. I’m going to leave it for a while longer to see if it does happen to thicken, but right now I’m thinking I’m going to have to toss it. 🙁
Katrina,
You are correct in that you killed the yogurt culture because your milk was too hot. With pasteurized milk, 115 is perfectly safe. Heating to 180 kills all the bacteria, which insures that the only living bacteria in the batch is the yogurt culture–but you must wait until the mixture cools to less than 130 before you add it.
With pasteurized milk straight from the gallon, you’re unlikely to truly need to heat it to 180, but some people do as a precaution. I know it’s too late now, but you probably could have remade it if you’d used some new starter. Because it sat out, I would probably heat to 180 when remaking it just to make sure no new bacteria had grown.