You probably know it, you’ve baked nice bread often enough with your bread machine. White bread, brown bread, sourdough bread. But homemade yoghurt from the bread maker, is it possible? We do know the bread machine as a handy kitchen tool. Kneading and preparing your own bread. A bread machine is very practical. However, what many people do not know is that you can also do a lot of other things with this bread maker.
A breadmaker as a yoghurt maker?
Surely a bread machine can only make bread? Nothing could be further from the truth. Many do not know that you can prepare many other recipes in this machine. What a shame! You can perfectly use the bread machine to make yoghurt. In this article, I will tell you the best way to prepare yoghurt in the breadmaker. The tastiest recipes for yoghurt are simply made in the bread maker.
Homemade yoghurt, what do I need?
Making your own yoghurt. What do I need? It depends a bit on what kind of yoghurt you are going to make and what kind of yoghurt you want. Thick yoghurt, full-fat yoghurt or plain yoghurt, anything goes! When it comes to yoghurt, there are some ”required fields” that you should always tick off. By default, you need a few things for your own yoghurt:
- Milk
- Yogurt cultures
- Clean pot to store the yoghurt in
- Cheesecloth or gelatine to thicken the yoghurt
- Measuring cup
Make yoghurt with the best milk
Experience shows that organic milk often gives the best results for tasty yoghurt. Also, whole milk is also possible. You can also simply make yoghurt with coconut milk. Of course, this does not taste like traditional yoghurt but more like coconut yoghurt, although you need some additional ingredients for that. You can also make lactose-free yoghurt with soya milk.
Making drinking yoghurt in a breadmaker
You can also make plain drinking yoghurt in the bread maker. I can tell you that freshly made drinking yoghurt is very tasty! You just have to make sure that you use the right ingredients for drinking yoghurt. Normally, to make drinking yoghurt you can simply use a recipe for regular yoghurt. However, drinking yoghurt often involves adding extra sugar.
Yoghurt in a breadmaker, some useful tips!
- Add a tablespoon of sugar for every 100 centilitres of milk. This way, you ensure that the bacteria have more food to provide a more complete end product.
- You can also let the final product drain on a dish towel after cooking, and the end result will be thicker in the end.
- Add a tablespoon of milk powder per 100 centilitres of milk
- Your fridge might still surprise you! You can revisit what products you have in your fridge that you can add for extra flavour. Sometimes products you haven’t thought of can be a great addition to the yoghurt. Think syrup, cereals, jam, honey, syrup, and so on.
How many litres of milk do I need?
This depends on how much you want to make. In addition, how much you need also depends on the recipes.
There are several recipes for yoghurt, it all depends on whether you want to make creamy yoghurt, healthy yoghurt, Greek yoghurt or traditional yoghurt. So which recipes you choose depends on your own taste. I can highly recommend Greek yoghurt with fruit!
Adjust the number of litres of milk in proportion
What you should keep in mind is that you always follow the recipe properly and that when you want to make more yoghurt you don’t just use more milk products, but also take into account that the rest of the ingredients should be adjusted in proportion to the recipe.
Warm milk
Make use of warmed milk is another valuable tip I want to give you. If you are going to make your own yoghurt then it is best to add warm milk immediately as heated milk is a requirement for yoghurt to cook properly. It can save you time to heat in advance. Pour in the milk immediately, otherwise, the milk will cool down.
Yoghurt too thin?
It may happen that after making yoghurt that the finished product is too thin for the flavour you want to give it. If you don’t like sour yoghurt, this can be annoying. You don’t have to make a new batch right away in that case. You can just let the yoghurt ferment. You need to do this for 24 hours.
You can possibly add a tablespoon of gelatine in advance or drain the yoghurt on a cheesecloth after some time. If you decide to drain after making yogurt, the longer you let the yogurt drain, the more it will resemble cream cheese.
Making yoghurt with yoghurt cultures
Once you have made your own yoghurt using yoghurt cultures, you can use this to make yoghurt at least 10 more times. After each time the yoghurt is ready, take off around 3 to 4 tablespoons and put them in the next litre of milk. If you don’t want to make yoghurt again immediately, you can of course store the yoghurt cultures. If you store them well, the homemade yoghurt will then be very tasty even after a few days. However, it is important to keep the yoghurt cultures at a constant temperature.
Making yoghurt after storing cultures
Are you going to make yoghurt again? Take off some yoghurt, let it come to room temperature and then add it to a litre of fresh milk. The culture decreases in strength when the yoghurt takes longer to acidify.
Other options as a yoghurt maker?
You can use a breadmaker very well as a yoghurt maker, but are there other simple methods of making yoghurt? Yes, there are. In fact, you can also make yoghurt just fine in the oven. Just as the bread machine is not just for baking bread, the oven is not just for preparing hot dishes.
Heat the oven low enough.
I can tell you, any recipe from the oven for yoghurt tastes delicious! You just need to be able to heat the oven low enough. If you cannot heat the oven low enough you can put a pizza stone in the oven to retain heat.
TIP: Use an oven thermometer to avoid both too high and too low temperatures.