Homemade Yogurt Cultures Are Easy To Prepare

The first thing you need are the cultures themselves. Order them from our on-line store. All you need is about 1 tablespoon of cultures.

You can follow the instructions below or watch our new YouTube video:

Instructions:

  • A plastic or glass (preferably glass) container with lid large enough to contain all the yogurt you want to make. We recommend 1/2 cup of room temperature milk per teaspoon of cultures.
  • Milk. You can use whole milk, 2% or skim, whichever you like, we prefer organic.
  • Place the Cultures/Bulgaros in your container.
  • Add milk. Half cup of room temperature milk for every teaspoon of cultures.
  • Cover them loosely, leaving space for air to circulate.
  • Put them in a warm place (next to the oven, for example), especially during winter time.
  • Do not put them in the refrigerator
  • Wait 24 hours. The milk should have turned into yogurt.
  • Strain out the yogurt using a fine mesh sifter.
  • Add milk to the cultures/bulgaros and repeat.

That's it! This converts the milk into yogurt which can be used in your favorite recipes and beauty masques. See our recipes section for some ideas.

Caring for Yogurt Cultures

You will see that your cultures will thrive and grow as they busily convert milk into yogurt. They reproduce easily with heat and you might need to cull your cultures colony from time to time to keep it from getting very big. After rinsing them in preparation for making a new batch of yogurt, just throw away any of the bulgaros cultures you don't need — or better yet, give them to a friend.

If you don't want to make yogurt on a particular day, you can store the bulgaros cultures in water overnight. But don't do this too often, they really need milk to thrive and grow. If you are going on a short trip for a day or two, simply put the cultures in milk and put the bowl in the refrigerator. This slows down the yogurt making process enough so that when you return, the yogurt will be ready.

If you are going of vacation for more than a day or two, rinse the cultures, put them in an airtight jar (like a babyfood jar) and put the jar in the freezer while you are gone. When you return, take the bulgaros out of the freezer and place them immediately in milk. It might take a day or two for them to revive completely, but have patience, it will happen!