Making Yogurt - Lactose Free

I love the taste and quality of homemade yogurt but recently I took on a new experiment with yogurt. Making it Lactose Free. My youngest daughter is showing signs of being lactose and gluten intolerant, so I decided to try making a batch of lactose free yogurt. I bought a litre of Organic Lactose Free milk and Nutri-Max yogurt culture (starter) at the health food store. I already had a second hand yogurt "maker" that I purchased at Value Village for $3.99.

Making yogurt, even lactose free, is really simple and the taste is soooo much better.

Here's the basic recipe I use:

Heat 1 litre of milk to 82ºC and let cool to 48ºC. Mix in the yogurt culture and pour into yogurt containers. Place containters in yogurt maker and Incubate at 40-46ºC until milk has curdled (turned solid), about 4 hours.
Then place yogurt in refridgerator.

Sometimes I alter the recipe a bit to add sweetener and/or berries. This particular batch I made two containers of Blueberry yogurt and 4 containers of Vanilla Bean yogurt.

For Blueberry Variation:

Add fresh or frozen wild blueberries (I like using them as they are smaller) to the bottom of the yogurt container and pour yogurt overtop before incubating. I also find you need more sweetener with berries as they tend to be more tart.

For Vanilla Bean Variation: Scrape the seeds out of half a vanilla pod and add to milk while heating (I also like to add the vanilla bean and remove before adding the culture). Continue with steps for basic recipe.

I currently have a batch of Vanilla yogurt sweetened with Agave incubating, I will let you know how it turns out:)