Did you know that making your own homemade yogurt is a relatively simple and painless exercise? The ingredients are few and inexpensive and the equipment required is minimal. The following instructions are to make one quart of plain yogurt using whole milk.

The only equipment you'll need is a saucepan, a cooking thermometer and an electric yogurt maker (or some other way of maintaining the temperature of the milk while it ferments). The main ingredient is milk, to which you will need to add a yogurt starter culture (I discuss this in more detail further on).

Pour one quart of fresh milk into a saucepan and heat until small bubbles appear around the outside of the saucepan.

At this point, remove the saucepan from the heat and allow to cool to between 110 and 115 F. The milk will cool more quickly if the saucepan is allowed to stand in cold water.

Now we need to add the yogurt starter. The purpose of the starter is to introduce the bacteria which will be responsible for the fermentation process. The most common starter is a small amount of plain commercial yogurt (two tablespoons is enough for one quart of milk). Or there are some freeze dried starters available, but these are more expensive. The main thing to check is that the yogurt starter contains live cultures.

Once the milk has cooled to the desired temperature, take one cup of the warm milk and add to it the yogurt starter. Stir until it has dissolved, then add the mixture back to the rest of the warm milk.

Next, pour the mixture into your yogurt maker. Its job is to maintain the correct temperature of the milk for the duration of the fermentation process. The yogurt will be ready in about eight hours. The longer you leave the milk to ferment, the thicker and more tart will be the resulting product.

When fermentation is finished, store the yogurt in the refrigerator for at least four hours before eating. This is important as it stops the fermentation process. If kept in the refrigerator, the yogurt should last for roughly ten days.

Please be aware that the procedure described in this article is general in nature. Please check the specific instructions which came with your yogurt maker [http://www.squidoo.com/yogurtmakers].