Making Bread, Ice Cream and Yogurt At Home: Worth It or Not?
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photo: megan.chromik
Ask a foodie why they’re in the kitchen whipping up a few pints of homemade chocolate chunk ice cream, kneading whole wheat bread dough or canning tomato sauce, and cost-effectiveness likely hasn’t crossed his or her mind.
Making things from scratch is a great way to have control over what’s in your food. “Oftentimes, you can reduce the calories, fat content or preservatives content,” say Lia LoBello and Erin Howard, the founders of Yay! DIY.
Other benefits: learning a new skill and bragging rights that you made something many other won’t even attempt.
But is going the do-it-yourself route ever really a money-saver? The short answer: it depends, but in most cases, no. Home cooks who want to make the DIY route more affordable need to think about five hurdles:
1. Ingredient prices
Buying the ingredients to make, say, bread or yogurt, can be as expensive — if not more so – than buying those items straight from the shelves. For example, a three-pack of yeast costs $2.39, while a full-size loaf of Wonder Bread is $2. (Even if you splurged on a $4 artisan loaf from your local bakery, you may still come out ahead cost-wise.)
The gap widens if you go organic. “It would cost me much more to buy the [organic] cream alone than it would to purchase a few pints of organic ice cream,” says Melanie Downey, the founder of natural skincare line Wilava. She does it anyway. “The fresh taste you get from making your own ice cream from the best ingredients doesn’t compare to anything you can get at the store,” she says.
Solution: Combine coupons and store sales to cut costs when you can, and when you can’t, just purchase the size with the lowest unit price (usually, the biggest size-wise). Try to use ingredients from your pantry, fridge or even your garden in lieu of buying them. (Downey uses fruit from her garden.)
2. Time commitment
Tossing food in your supermarket cart and battling long checkout lines is relatively tame compared with four hours of time in and near the kitchen to make bread, or the overnight wait and half-hour of active time for homemade yogurt. That’s time you could spend doing any number of other things.
Solution: Keep at it. Novice DIY-ers can cut the time spent as they get better at making a particular food, says Claire Fountain of For the Taste of It.
If you have the storage space, large batches offer a bigger payoff without much additional time. “In those cases where you bake or cook in bulk and freeze your own goods, it can be a money saving event,” Fountain says.
3. Equipment
Adding in pricey equipment like a bread maker ($70 to $220 at Bed, Bath & Beyond) or ice cream maker ($30 to $300) reduces the time commitment but adds to the cost. Think of it this way: if a pint of Ben & Jerry’s costs $4.50 and you can make your own for roughly $3 in ingredients, you need to make 20 batches in the cheapest machine just to break even.
Solution: Keep cost-per-use in mind when you’re deciding which — if any — model to buy. If your plan is to make your own yogurt, ice cream, etc., just a few times a year, look for lower-cost solutions. Yogurt can be made using canning jars instead of a yogurt maker, for example, while the ice cream is easily made using the tried-and-true coffee-can method.
4. Cooking skills
Frugal Foodie has had five spectacular cooking disasters so far in her lifetime, two of them involving attempts on homemade yogurt. Handling active cultures of yeast (bread) and bacteria (yogurt) isn’t a foolproof process.
Solution: Follow the instructions exactly and start with basic recipes until you get the hang of things (Frugal Foodie is now a yogurt master).
5. Quantity eaten
With fewer preservatives in them, homemade goods just don’t last as long. (Those expensive ingredients, like yeast, also have a relatively short shelf life.)
Solution: Stick to items you consume frequently. Military spouse Amy Bushatz found that making her own baby food was one of the rare times homemade saved money without a big time commitment. “An hour of steaming and food processing and I have enough pureed carrots in the freezer to last us two weeks using the equivalent of two jars every day,” she says. By her estimates, that one batch saved $10.
Get creative with how you use homemade goods that spoil fast. “The only downside [to my homemade bread] is that it doesn’t last as long,” says Linsey Knerl, a.k.a. The Freelance Farmer. So she incorporates recipes that call for stale bread, including a French toast casserole and homemade stuffing.
Frugal Foodie is a journalist based in New York City who spends her days writing about personal finance and obsessing about what she’ll have for dinner. Chat with her on Twitter through @MintFoodie.
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38 Comments so far
leave a commentAs a person with Type 1 diabetes I have a different reason for making ice cream at home. A single 1/2 cup serving of low-far ice cream has about 15g of sugar. That’s nearly half the amount of carbohydrates I allow myself in a single meal. Contrast that with a pint of home made ice cream using whole full fat ice cream, organic vanilla extract and stevia in the raw. 8g of sugar for the entire pint!
As for ice cream makers costing $300. Well if you are going to eat 137 calories or more (americans don’t understand portion control), why not burn off those calories making the ice cream. I make my ice cream using Play and Freeze Ice Cream Maker. You can find it at many stores nationwide. My kids and I have fun tossing or rolling the ball around knowing that at the end of 20 minutes we’ll have delicious home made ice cream.
As for the statement about home made foods not lasting long – do you really think there is health benefit to preservatives and other food additives in pre-made foods?
First of all, you don’t use three packs of yeast to make one loaf of bread. So that actually comes out to 80 cents per pack of yeast. You wouldn’t factor in an entire bag of flour would you?
Also, if you buy a large pack of yeast at Costco or BJs the price drop is dramatic (I think its 5-6 dollars for a pound of yeast). It covers your bread for a year, even if you make a loaf or two a week
I am a pretty big fan of making my own bread and I have to say I think you missed the mark in this regard. Firstly, three packets of yeast are not required for one loaf or bread, so that comparison is invalid. Also, if frugality is your goal, yeast can (and should) be purchased in larger quantities. Even better, you can make a sourdough culture for next to no cost. Secondly, you don’t need any equipment to make bread other than an oven, a container to store your dough, and a pan to bake it on/in. Finally, while you can spend a significant amount of time baking, you can also make dough in bulk, keep it up to two weeks in refrigeration, and pull a piece off and bake whenever you want.
Many natural food stores will even have the yeast in bulk — I paid $1.87 for a cup of yeast last time I bought it.
Is it the cost that you pay upfront or the cost that you pay down the road? I have made bread (thanks to no knead recipe) and it is cost effective.
Please look at the ingredients in packaged products, most of them i do not understand (chemical names).
This raises some good questions. There are ways to do it cheaper and faster. Machines are not necessary for most of it.
For bread there is the Artisan/Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a day method which is crazy easy. Add to that being able to make it exactly how you want it. The time commitment is minimal. You only need a bowl or plastic container and an oven. Also if you are committed to making bread with any regularity you don’t buy packets of yeast, you get it in larger quantity and having it go bad isn’t a problem because you actually use it.
For making yogurt jars in a cooler with warm water is cheaper and better than a yogurt maker and you can make more. When our kids were smaller we would make a gallon and a half of milk into yogurt at a time. It took about 15 minutes to get it started and then it just had to sit.
Both of these processes do take time, but it isn’t your time. Sure it takes a couple hours for the bread to rise or 7 hours for yogurt, but it sits there and you can still do whatever it is you need.
You can buy a 2 lb (yes I said pounds) package of yeast at costco for about $5 bucks. This will make somewhere in the hundreds of loaves of bread. Flour is dirt cheap there too. A 25 lb bag is about $8. So now you have enough ingredients for $13 to make probably 20 batches of home-made bread. 65 cents for a batch is pretty cheap. And the bread will taste better than your $2 loaf of white bread.
Making bread is fun and easy. You don’t need a breadmaker. I will admit my stand mixer makes bread making a cinch though.
As a person who doesn’t have any type of diabetes (just yet) I can safely say making really darn good ice cream, with free range eggs, and good heavy cream, it ridiculously expensive. At this level of ingredients use, the resulting ice cream is so rich and fulfilling one can almost never eat much, making procurement of raw material even more expensive. Totally not worth it, totally just for gluttonous self-indulgence, but very fun. So I still do it.
Totally off the mark with bread. You can buy a huge (HUGE!) container of yeast at Costco that will let you make hundreds(!) of loaves of bread for a few dollars. Likewise, you can purchase a 25lb bag of flour there for $8. That’s enough to make 22 loaves. Add in a 5lb bag of sugar and a liter of olive oil, and you have enough materials to make dozens of loves of bread.
As for the equipment, take a walk down to your local thrift store. I got my Breadman Ultimate for $5.
I’ve made well over 50 loaves of bread since I got my machine, and I estimate my total cost to date to be around $40. Add in some electricity (not much!) and you get about $1 a loaf for delicious, better than anywhere else, French Bread.
Gee. $1 for fresh, steamy, crunch, home made french bread, or $2 for wonderbread. Wow. Hard choice.
Did I mention it’s easy too? I leave the right sized measuring container in (or with) each ingredient. Scoop of oil – check. Scoop of sugar – check. Scoop of water – Check. Scoop of flour – check. Scoop of spices – check. Scoop of yeast – check.
Click start. 3 hours later, enjoy!
For some people I understand that’s part of the fun, for me its being able to put wholesome things on my plate and save money.
Things that I -have- made before.
Bread : I was putting together artisan quality whole wheat bread at around $1 a loaf. Making batches of 4-6 loaves at a time. Flour is inexpensive and you’re totally off-base on your claim regarding yeast. We were picking up small jars of yeast (about enough for 40 or 50 loves) for about $7 at the local supermarket. (That translates to less than 20 cents a loaf). Compare this to the $3-6 you’d pay for a loaf of bread where I live, and suddenly that $1 loaf is looking seriously awesome. And you can proof, punch, rise, freeze. Then bake for fresh bread on demand.
Beer : Takes some knowledge, but -nothing- compared to yogurt. Takes some equipment (I laid out around $300, but the equipment will last essentially for a lifetime). I’m making 8 gallons for $30 of artisan quality amber ale using bottled spring water and fresh grains from a local brew shop. Try comparing this to a quality brew off the shelf? A 4-pack of Kilkenny runs ~$12 here. My 8 gallons of comparable fresh ale would cost a whopping $160.
Jerky : Another one that requires some knowledge and maybe a little bit of equipment if you want to get it right. You can turn a $5 steak into nearly $50 worth of jerky in about 8 hours with negligible ingredients (The spices are less than a dollar a batch. Some of them are an investment, like liquid smoke, which really isn’t used for much else).
(And yeah, I realize this sounds awfully like man-food weekly… Hearty bread, beer and dried meat… But hey, I cook what I like to eat)
You’re entirely right about the skills you learn though, knowing how to make dough can easily be extrapolated into putting together a $10 pizza that will make your Sunday night delivery from Bob’s Pizza Joint look about as appetizing as the box it comes in. There are -lots- of excellent reasons to “Do It Yourself”, you just have to be choosy about what sorts of things you’re cooking and be realistic about what you’re expecting to spend and what you’re expecting to get… and understand that the first couple times you may not get the product quality you’d hoped for. Choosing bread, ice cream, and yogurt is like choosing Easy, Medium and Hard… but there’s so many things in between, so many delicious experiments, and many of them are a mere fraction of the cost you’d pay for the item from the store, and every last one of them is healthier for you.
Sorry, but have you ever baked for yourself?
Making your own bread cuts it costs at least in half, comparing it to the cheapest you can buy.
I make two 800g (28 ounces I think) spelt breads for 70 euro cent (0,85 us cent) and that is with electricity.
Simple wheat is about 25-35 euro cent (electricity pushes the costs) for the same amount.
Time spend an those two breads is about 3x5min, way less if you do not clean by hand and put everything in the washing machine.
Try this at home: Buy dry yeast. Take one glas of water, put one pinch of suger in it, put one pinch of dry yeast in it, stir well let it sit for 1-2 minutes. Add this to 500g-1kg of flour, add 3-5 glasses of water and some salt (until you have the right consistency) kned it, and let ist rest for at least an hour, better longer.
Come back kned it an let it again rest for at least an hour (you can skip this part, but it makes the bread more fluffy).
Put the dough in a pre heated oven at 180°C (356°F) with ventilator and lower heat.
Bake for 50min. Never failed me.
Close the dry yeast after using, you can make 10 breads at least with the ammount declared as “for 500g flour”, plus the bread does not smell of yeast! It just smells of bread. (old trick for every kind of baking with yeast, taking just a smal amount and letting the dough grow two times)
Sour dough you have only to do once, it costs only a little flour, water and time.
Oh, and one thing. Comercially produced bread, also at yout local bakery has lard in it, it makes the baked goods look better, and get dry faster. (never put lard in a bread)
My spelt bread can sit for 4-5 days in the open and you cannot tell if it was made just the same day or not, try this with bought bread, even with preservatives.
Yeast can be purchased in quantity for two to ten dollars/lb. If you do this, you need to store it in a sealed glass jar in a freezer. Yeast costs go down to pennies/loaf. Flour can also be purchased in 25 or 50 pound bags for as little as 8 to $16. With a breadmaker you can let the machine do it all, or you can just let it knead the dough and do the rises. I can make a pizza the way I like it for $3 in less time than it takes to drive out and get one.
The real advantage is the freshness of the bread, and the ability to make many different kinds including your own specialties.
All you need to make yogurt is some milk and a little left over yogurt from the previous batch. I make mine in a quart size Dannon container.
On a stove, heat the milk just shy of boiling and let it cool to a temperature where it is still warm to the touch but not hot. Stir in a tablespoon or two of yogurt. Dump the result into whatever container you are using and stick it in an oven over-night on the top shelf near the oven light which should be on.
When you wake up the next morning you’ll have a new batch of yogurt. Put it in the fridge to cool and you’re done.
Total cost is $0.80-$0.90 per quart.
I got a pound of instant yeast for around $5 from King Arthur Flour. I gave away some of it and I make bread regularly. I have yet to make a dent in the amount of yeast I have. Making your own bread is definitely worth is, especially if you use the easy No Knead recipes that has long rising times but very little active cooking time.
i’m still mastering the skill of breadmaking. the price of homemade bread is in the range to that of what you’d pay for comparable artisan fancy breads (or much cheaper). the satisfaction of it all is worth it. if anything i have a valuable skill in the event of a catastrophe + it allows me to be creative andlearn food science
phillip, if your bread is not under a dollar you’re doing something wrong. trust me, i’ve been baking bread for years and not just occasionally – i usually bake 2 loafs a week. even some of the fancier breads i’ve made should not exceed $1.50
haha, I love doing this tradeoff for myself, and I love to shop & cook, but often lack the time. Here are some winners:
– smoothies: huge win esp. if you have 3-4 friends– super easy.
– home-made pasta sauce: winner if tomatoes are cheap+good, also a winner if you ‘doctor’ a jarred sauce.
– beer: beermachine.com has easy+awesome kit beer at a fraction of the price.
– sushi: only if you have a good source for the fish and you can get 4-6 friends (but omg if you do…)
– dumplings: only if you care about the ingredients e.g. organic meat.
– ground meat: huge win– tastes completely different, but true it’s messy.
– certain kinds of complex cocktails– we make Sazerac’s by the dozen, using a pre-mix and pre-frozen glasses, that makes it take a few seconds each.
hope this helps,
adam
about 5-6 loaves per $3 5lb bag of flour, 3-12 loaves from that three pack of yeast (the most expensive way to buy it), 10 cents to run the oven (or less if it’s helping heat your house in winter). So anywhere from less than a dollar to $1.50 per loaf. Freeze it or add 25 cents worth of oil/egg yolks to keep it from going stale quickly. Pick recipes that take little time in the kitchen (a few folds instead of kneading) and that have rise times that fit your schedule (anywhere from 2 – 18 hrs.). But hell, if you don’t enjoy it, it’s still not worth it.
Why not mention gardening? If you are buying soil, amendments, fertilizer, pesticides, planters, etc it’s easy to end up growing extremely expensive veggies.
As has been noted you don’t use an entire 3 pack of yeast for 1 loaf of bread… you can get 1 or 2 huge loaves out of 1 packet. Buy yeast and flour in larger quantities available in supermarkets and the price dramatically goes down. In addition… you cannot put a price on making your own bread, the smell of the dough and the taste of eating YOUR bread that does not look feel and taste like millions of other loaves with exactly the same ingredients (including unpronouncable ingredients) and packaged identically wrapped in the same industrial wrapping.
Sooo… be daring, make your own food from scratch and don’t listen to these idiotic web “cost analysis” articles that do nothing but provide worthless content to justify ad revenue.
I also have to disagree.
Here is my setup:
1 5lb bag quality bread flour: $4.50 (Makes 4 loaves)
1 jar (4oz) Fleischmann’s Instant Yeast: $8.50 (Makes 8 loaves)
The cost per loaf is about $2.50 including the cost of other ingredients like salt and sugar. This yields a loaf that has more mass and much more nutrition than a loaf of wonder bread, which is mostly air and simple carbs. The saving over buying artisan bread are significant.
One of my favorite cost savers is making home made pizza. The cost here is WAY less than 1/2 that of a good quality restaurant pizza.
Yeah that yeast comparison is really silly. It takes a teaspoon or so of yeast per loaf of bread. Making a loaf of bread costs me under $2 and it’s hot, fresh, healthier, great texture, and can have great herbs added in. No-knead bread is where it’s at.
What REALLY makes me love the homemade route is pizza dough. So so easy, just flour, water, yeast, and seasonings. Instead of an expensive calorie fest we spread on some plain (cheap!) tomato paste which is soooo rich in flavor, sometimes some grated cheese, olive oil, and herbs from the garden. Pizza feels and tastes healthy, and gets fresh veggies added on – sliced zucchini, sliced potatoes with rosemary, fresh peppers, spinach…yum! We’ll never order pizza again! (And storebought crusts are bready and tasteless!) MMm and if you make it on the grill…yum.
Another way your analysis of bread baking is inaccurate is on keeping time. The bread I make most often uses nothing but salt, water, flour and yeast. If you aren’t using milk, butter, eggs or other perishables in your bread, it will last a long time if you cover it in a way that it doesn’t dry out. I have kept it for a week or ten days with no problem. And I also place a value on satisfaction. The satisfaction of baking it yourself is tremendous. People are way too willing to turn control of their food over to somebody else. I have the satisfaction of knowing I made it and knowing exactly what went into it. The person who did this cost analysis doesn’t know what he is talking about at all.
Don’t buy the yeast from the grocery store. You will pay two arms and a leg.
Instead, buy it online. http://www.bulkfoods.com has good quality yeast, 5 pounds for 25 bucks, and that will last for a few years, if you freeze it.
The yogurt comparison to store-bought is way off, and most issues with mishandling of cultures is simply a matter of not following directions. You can make yogurt with items already in your kitchen (except perhaps the thermometer) with your only cost being the milk that you buy, and the energy used in heating milk. The former is much cheaper than buying milk, and the latter is most likely less than the gasoline consumed getting to and from the store.
Yogurt making time, including cleanup, is 45 minutes. Counting the time that the yogurt incubates undisturbed is like counting the time that the store-bought yogurt spent on the truck being shipped to your supermarket. I make two quarts of yogurt from organic milk from grass-fed cows, which I buy for $3.59. Not that you could find milk that even compares, but Stoneyfiled organic runs about $3 for a quart by me (or $6 for two quarts). The homemade stuff lasts exactly as long in the refrigerator, which is to say about ten to twelve days.
Lastly, the store-bought items cited for cost comparisons (bread and milk) are all heavily subsidized by the federal government. Do you really think Wonder bread only costs $2 to grow, make, ship, wholesale, and retail? They just took the rest out of your paycheck before you ever got it, and viola! Cheap food. And what about the cost of disposing of all the waste from package store goods? Is that done for free where you live? Try making yogurt again. It’s cheaper, healthier, and produces no waste:
http://www.makeyourownyogurt.com/
Wow for someone who calls her self frugal foodie you don’t seem to know much about actual cost of preparing food. No, scratch that, you don’t seem to know anything. Packets of yeast? What cook buys packets of yeast? I buy a 2 lb brick of active dry yeast, which can be had for 7 or 8 bucks … hell, let’s call it $10 for simplicity. 2 lb in grams is 907 but we’ll use 900 to keep the math simpler. A teaspoon of yeast is roughly equal to about 3 grams. That means 300 teaspoons in that brick. The cost, about 3.3 cents per tsp. I use 1/4 tsp for my breads so my cost per loaf is 0.825 cents. Next the flour – use use about 400 grams. By far the most expensive ingredient in this at roughly 70 cents. Salt, maybe a cent or two. Water? LOL? Anyway so let’s add it all up to say 75 cents. That’s helluva lot better than what you’re suggesting, in addition to being healthier.
I also make yogurt, butter (this one not as cost effective as all the others), ricotta, applebutter and just about anything else to a jar will hold. Some of these stay in our freezer for 6 – 8 months and I have yet to have a problem with a single one going bad.
Also as far as time commitment goes, I’ll give you that bit about keeping at it. As you do it you get better and faster at it. It takes me about 5 – 7 minutes to mix my breads, let them rise for 10 – 14 hrs. When I get back it takes me about 5 minutes to shape it and then about 50 seconds to put it in a preheated pan. Of course I might have to pause my favorite tv show in 40 minutes to go pull it out, but hey that’s a small sacrifice to make.
I can definitely tell that the writer of the column did not go to Culinary school. You do not take the total cost of the ingredient since you will not use the entire quantity of that ingredient. I make everything in my house from scratch, since it makes sense for me and the fact that I can do everything fast. A loaf of Wonderbread as stated above costs around $2 but my bread recipe food cost is $.78 plus a total time commitment of 15 minutes. That 15 minutes includes measuring out ingredients (3 minutes), Putting in Mixer (30 sec), Changing dough from mixer to fermentation bowl (1 minute), From fermentation bowl to individual loafs (3 minutes), Loading in oven (1 minute), Taking out of oven and out of pans (2 minutes), Packaging for freezer (5 minutes). Of course that does not include the down time of fermentation (2 hours or more), Proofing (1 hour) and baking (35-45 min depending on type). But in the end I have a healthier loaf of bread, did not take that much time and saved myself money. I will make four to five loaves a week since we tend to go through almost a loaf a day in my house.
I would suggest to the writer to do a little more research into a subject before writing columns. Making anything food wise at home is cheaper than buying packaged; unless you buy all the ingredients pre-packaged. Meaning if making a pizza at home you buy pre-shredded cheese, pizza dough in can, pizza sauce in a can, pre-sliced toppings it will be cheaper to order a pizza in most cases. If you make the pizza dough from scratch, sauce from scratch, shred your cheese from a block, and cut your own toppings you can make two pizzas for the cost of ordering one.
Kenwood ice cream maker prepares fresh home made ice cream, 40 minutes.
something else to keep a look out for is a local buying club or food coop. getting wholesale prices as a group drives the cost of ingredients way down, and sometimes you’ll end up with local product.
joining my local buying club made making homemade bread, yogurt and fermentations a no brainer.
I would like to add to the making bread segment. I teach high school culinary arts. Buy 1 pound of yeast at Sams or Costco. It runs about $2.50 for a pound (makes about 150 loaves of bread) v.s. a 3 strip (makes 2 loaves of bread). Since yeast is a living organism, after opening put into a zip lock bag and label date. Yeast lasts about 6 months in the freezer, 6 weeks in the refrigerator and about 6 days at room temp. once the package is opened.
I would also check out redstar http://www.redstaryeast.com/ or Fleischmans at: http://www.breadworld.com/
Bread making can be made by hand but I would recommend looking on Craigslist or at a garage sale for a used machine. Look for a machine which is newer, currently still sold, and contains the inside paddle in the bucket.
I raised 4 children and we had home made pizza every Friday night with yeast bread. The best!! and nice and cheap.
Yogurt is definitely not very time consuming and is very cheap to make. A half gallon of milk costs about $1.15 – $1.50 and all that is extra added upon that is the cost of heating up the milk. Yogurt is very easy to make and takes me about 30min active time and then 8 hours of it sitting somewhere (overnight, etc) where you don’t do anything and touch it at all.
You can even make greek yogurt very easily by straining it using a white t-shirt or a cheesecloth and it ends up being a lot! cheaper. For greek yogurt, 1/2 gallon of milk (I use 1%) makes the same amount as one of those $6 tubs of chobani greek yogurt. Your cost = $1.50 approx. I’d say that saving $4.50 is definitely worth it!
Oh, and if you don’t make greek yogurt, it ends up costing $1.50 for two containers of those large yogurt tins. Those tins usually cost ~$2.50 each. It costs $1.50 to make the yogurt for 2 container’s worth. $3 for 2 container’s worth gives you a savings of $2.
Also, here’s my method of making homemade yogurt:
Ingredients
—————–
* Glass jars to keep the yogurt in (you can use leftover pasta/salsa/applesauce jars or canning jars. You can use as many or as little as you want to make, it doesn’t make a difference.
* Milk, any type. Whole milk will make thicker yogurt than skim milk, but you can also strain it.
* Either candy or meat thermometer that can measure between 110 degrees and 180 degrees (my meat thermometer measures down to 120, but if you can approximate down 10 degrees, you can use one like mine)
* 2 tbsp to 1/2 cup of starter yogurt, aka less than one small container (look for plain yogurt that when you look on it it says “contains active cultures”. I have found that Dannon plain and Stonyfield Farms plain work fine).
* A full-sized towel to wrap the glass jars in when you put it in the oven (this will get a milky/yogurt smell so you will have to wash it afterwards)
* A flat bottomed spoon is best, but you can use any spoon really
* Whisk
Directions
—————–
1. Take your glass containers and fill them with milk (so you know how much milk to use).
2. Pour the milk into a large pot.
3. Put the thermometer in the pot (depending on the type, you may need to hold it in there, but some can rest on the pot)
4. Put the burner on medium-high. Stir the milk often until the milk gets to around 120-130 degrees, then stir very very frequently, making sure to scrape the bottom of the pan (you don’t want the milk to burn on the bottom).
5. When the milk reaches between 180-185, remove it from the burner.
6. Let the milk cool to 110 degrees. The quickest way to do this is to put some very cold water in the sink and put the milk pot in the sink (make sure the water level in the sink doesn’t go higher than the milk level in the pot or the pot will float). You can also add ice cubes to the outside water.
7. Turn oven on warm.
8. When the milk reaches 110 degrees, take a little bit of the milk out and mix it with your yogurt starter in small cup or something. If you are doing around 1/2 gallon of milk, you should use about 1/4 cup of yogurt. If you are using a pint of milk, you should use around 2 tbsp (these are all approximate numbers).
9. Pour the milk/starter yogurt mix into the warm milk pot and use a whisk to mix them well together.
10. Take the pot out of the sink and drain the water down the sink.
11. Pour the milk into the glass container(s) and cover with the lid(s).
12. Clean the milk pot out and dry it. Put a large towel in the pot. Place the glass container(s) in the pot and wrap completely with the towel (for insulation).
13. Turn oven off warm and if you have an oven light, turn that on.
14. Put the pot with the towel-wrapped glass containers in the oven.
15. Wait 6-12 hours. (if you turn the yogurt jar, it will appear firmer instead of completely milky). The longer you leave it in, the more ‘sour’ it will taste and the thicker it will get.
(Optional) Make Greek Yogurt
Ingredients:
—————–
* Homemade yogurt (above)
* Colander
* Pot that the collander can go in with room on the bottom
* An old white t-shirt (or new but washed) is best as a filter, but you can also use cheesecloth or a really fine towel.
Directions
—————–
1. Line a colander with a square of a t-shirt or a cheesecloth. Put the colander in a pot.
2. Pour the yogurt in the colander.
3. Put the colander/pot in the fridge.
4. Let it sit for 1-6 hours depending on how thick you want the yogurt to turn out.
5. The watery stuff on the bottom is called “whey” and is fine to drink if you really want or used in recipes (smoothies, etc) or water plants.
6. If you find your yogurt came out too thick you can always add some of the whey back.
Okay, I’m glad I’m not the only one that was reading this post with raised eyebrows. A little more research would be ideal before you write a post that so many people will be passionate about. But basically, don’t count a container of an ingredient into the price, and people have been making bread before electricity. I borrowed a bread machine to see if it made my life easier and wasn’t such a fan, so my bread making equipment is ingredients, glass bowl, wooden spoon, bread pans, oven.
Whoever wrote this article did absolutely no research at all. I don’t want to say much about the yeast because other commenters have hit the nail. I make my own bread and buy yeast in bulk. It would be really stupid of me to buy little packets every two weeks for 2 loaves of bread. And you really don’t need a bread machine to make bread. All you need is a bowl and your hands. In fact, I would argue against bread machines as they’re very hit and miss as to quality and I hate the cubed loaves they produce. Also I really disagree with the quote received from Melanie Downey. “The fresh taste you get from making your own ice cream from the best ingredients doesn’t compare to anything you can get at the store.” That’s completely wrong. Clearly she’s never had good homemade ice cream. And not just speaking of ice cream, but ANYTHING I make at home is a 1000 times better than the processed junk I could get at the store. And what’s even better? I can pronounce all the ingredients.
Yeast can be purchased at Sam’s for about $3. a pound.
Hey, it sounds like DIY yogurt is getting a bum rap based on your experiences with making it. And that is sad because we make several gallons of it a week – yes we eat a lot of yogurt – and the cost is the price of the milk we use.
What you may not appreciate is that most of your dairy products come from those bacteria you seem hesitant to employ. Things like cottage cheese, buttermilk and, yes, yogurt are made with different varieties of bacteria.
We have found that culturing a combination of Activia and a Bulgarian yogurt results in an incredible yogurt. We have a Waring Pro Yogurt Maker which we use to make a gallon of yogurt at a time – we use 4 wide mouth quart Mason jars and throw a towel over the cover to fill the gap between the top and the base of the yogurt maker. Perfect and fantastic yogurt every time.
And it only takes 15 minutes time to culture and load the yogurt maker…. each time we make a gallon of yogurt, we save anywhere from $10 to $20 – depending on the yogurt being made.
A side benefit of DIY yogurt making is that you can eat a lot more yogurt and this stuff is delicious.
One more point is that neither the yogurt cultures nor the bread yeasts are as sensitive as stated… we freeze yogurt cultures for future batches and we have had bread yeast in their freeze-dried form last several years, as active as ever.
Bill
Considering the health side. You can be sure that it is clean and healthy. You can select best ingredients you want.
It is costly and time consuming on economic side.
I make pretty much all my own bread, I buy yeast in bulk and it is just a few pennies per loaf, I also buy the best organic flour I can find, organic honey/molasses/milk (if necessary) and I have yet to make a loaf that costs more than $1 for all the ingredients. And this is for the best quality ingredients.
The downside, frugality-wise, is that homemade non-preservative bread doesn’t last as long (1 week in the fridge), and ocassionally when trying a new recipe there may be a disaster that needs to be thrown out. But when it’s only $1 a loaf and so healthy, I think those are small downsides.
We also make our own yogurt, and save a lot of money doing so, but this only really works for us because we eat a LOT of yogurt (about 1 gallon/week or so) We probably wouldn’t do it if we ate less, because the yogurt would go bad before we could finish it, or you would have to make such small batches it wouldn’t be worth your time, so may not be a good idea for everyone.