Yogurt starters

I've been eating Nancy's yogurt for 30 yrs and want to make my own yogurt w/ a waring pro. I've made a batch using Nancy's as a starter with a high quality organic whole milk. I set the timer to 9 hours and doubled the amount of starter in the mix. My results were tangy and creamy but now I'm wondering what companies make the best commercial starters with european style results.

I've tried several commercial yogurts as starters and really liked Stonyfield Farm. I was less happy with Whole Foods house brand but did like the results from Yoplait. The Whole Foods lacked the tangyness of the SF one.

I ususally use Farmers 2% rather than whole milk and add some non-fat dry milk to the cooling Farmers milk. I have not used powdered starters simply because I haven't looked for any. It's just easy to buy one small plain yogurt when I'm buying milk. I make yogurt about once every two weeks. The kids think I'm crazy because "You could just buy some" What do they know?

I just started making my own yogurt a few weeks ago. I used the starter that came with the YoLife "incubator". It was okay. I'm using a starter I found at Whole Foods now, and I like it just fine.

Two things I've learned: soymilk makes terrible, thin, chalky-tasting yogurt. Grapefruit does NOT make a good add-in flavor to soymilk yogurt. Blech.

Did you see Harold McGee's piece, They Do the Work, You Reap the Yogurt, in the NYTimes?

Haven't tried using store yogurt as a starter yet...that's next batch.

Is straining in cheesecloth the best way to get that thick, Fage-like consistency?

In my experience, the richer the milk, the thicker the yogurt. That and a long cooking time seems to help.

Straining in cheesecloth is how my father-in-law makes lebaneh, or yogurt cheese. I don't think it's the same thing as Greek Yogurt

Thankyou ! If you haven't tried Nancy's , give it a try at Whole foods. I have always used the whole milk version in the purple container , but the f-free types are great also. The Springfield dairy is owned by Ken Kesey's brother. I'm going to try 11 hours instead of 9 this week and see what happens. I'm going to email a friend in France and see if there are any starters worth ordering. john benetti