I use a slight variation on Lori's process and it makes it so easy (m)
I pour the milk into a clean quart pickle jar and set it into my 6 qt pan about 1/2 to 3/4 full of water. Put the pan/jar onto med. high heat. I put a spoon into the jar with the milk and stir as it heats. I don't remove the spoon. I also throw my tongs and the jar lid into the water to sterilize them. Watch to make sure the water in the pan doesn't boil over into the milk. Continue to gently boil the water until the milk has lots of bubbles around the edges. Carefully remove the jar to the freezer/fridge to cool milk until it feels just warm when dropped onto inside of wrist. You'll need to stir occasionally to keep the temp even. While the yogurt is cooling, place the pan of hot water on a folded towel inside a large cooler and close. Add 2 T. of starter to cooled milk and stir with spoon that is still in jar. Place the jar inside cooler, remove spoon and loosely cover with lid (to keep the condensation on the cooler lid from dripping into the jar). Leave the the yogurt to ferment. I do this overnight so a) I'm not tempted to keep opening the cooler and b)it's done when we get up. Then just store it in the fridge. I don't take any yogurt out for starter. Since we go through about 1 qt. yogurt in about 3-4 days, I just wait until we get down to the last couple of T., remove it to a cup and make more, using the "left overs" as the starter.
We get nice, firm yogurt but it's still fairly mild/sweet. We just add stuff as we dish the yogurt out. (I make our own baby food so we have cubes of pureed/frozen blueberries, strawberries, cantaloupe, melon, peaches, etc. We just thaw a couple of cubes and throw them in with the yogurt.)
HTH!
Connie & #5 EDD 4/23/03
