Making Soy Yogurt

Going through some past newsgroup articles I found:

Newsgroup: rec.food.veg.cooking
Subject: Re: making soy yogurt
From: Mark Olsen
Date: Fri, 29 Nov 1996 04:01:43 GMT

I have a recipe here inside "The Vegan Cookbook", although I'm sure there are some resources already online somewhere.

If no one else can point you to a successful recipe and you can't get hold of that book, a-mail me and I'll attempt to type it up for you...

Newsgroup: rec.food.veg.cooking
Subject: Re: making soy yogurt
From: Ross Clement
Date: Tue, 3 Dec 1996 16:20:46 GMT

I've made lots of soy yogurt. It's not identical to dairy yogurt, but works well in cooking (though I do not advise making yogurt cheese with it .... horrible! .... though I might one day try pressing it and flavouring strongly with something).

I use a commercial yogurt maker, and soy milk. The only difficult part is obtaining the live culture to work with. Either you can use a dairy yogurt if you're lacto, or you will have to search for a live soy yogurt to start with. If you make it every week, you can use some of last week's batch as the starter mixture. In the UK Sojasun plain soy yogurt ("with live ferments") can be used as a starter. One of the manufacturers of, erm, pseudo-medicinal (I don't know the correct word or classification) acidophilus bacteria told me that their product (which is dairy free) should be useable as a starter, with their product having more bacteria per volume as yogurt, but were not sure.

Subject: Re: making soy yogurt?
From: Cynthia M. Van Ness
Date: 1996/10/26
Newsgroups: rec.food.veg

Yogurt is easily made from soy milk. I'd give you instructions, but my husband always does it in our house. All you need is a tablespoon of yogurt (with live cultures) from plain dairy yogurt. It's easiest with a yogurt maker--ours makes a quart at a time. It is usually a little runnier than dairy yogurt; one pours rather than scooping it. But it's also milder and has a nice nutty falvor.

Subject: Soy Yogurt Recipe
From: Leslie Bishko
Date: 1996/12/03
Newsgroups: rec.food.veg.cooking

Here's how I've been making soy yogurt with great results!

1 carton Vitasoy Original - DO NOT use the lowfat version yogurt starter: dairy or soy will work. (Nancy's soy yogurt did not have active cultures)
a dairy thermometer

Heat the soymilk to 140 F, then cool to about 120 F.
Pour into plastic containers.
Spoon in a little yogurt and stir.
Set containers inside a large pot filled with warm water and cover.
Place inside the oven - mine is gas and the pilot light keeps it at about 150 F. Leave it over night.

Voila!

Some hints:
* I don't think soymilk has to be boiled first, in fact, I think boiling it may bring out the "beany" taste more. I've gotten pretty good at just heating it up without using the thermometer and guessing when the temp is right.

* It turns out with a slightly tart tang, but it is not overly tart at all. A few times I've forgotten to get the stuff out of the oven and left it in about 24 hours - the results being slightly more tart and slightly more firm, but still entirely palatable. This does not make a super firm yogurt like store bought stuff, but it's not runny either.

* I have found that using a lot of starter does leave a strong beany taste almost reminiscent of bleu cheese at the top. So I use just a teaspoon or so and stir it well.

* Once I tried thickening the soymilk with some powdered "Better than milk" and it turned out very wierd and funky. I have flavored it with powdered carob, honey and almond extract and it tasted great - but mostly I like it plain.

I am very pleased with this stuff and whip out several batches a week!

Subject: Re: vegan yogurt substitute
From: Leslie Bishko
Date: 1996/09/15
Newsgroups: rec.food.veg.cooking

Lorne Walton wrote:
>does anybody know of a product I can use instead of yogurt that has that
>sour taste, not like the tofu yogurts I have tried?

With inspiration from recent postings here I have made my own and it has turned out beautifully! I AM SO EXCITED ABOUT GETTING TO EAT YOGURT AGAIN!

I use Vitasoy soymilk - original flavor. The nonfat kind didn't set, but the regular works fine. Heat the soymilk to 120 F (I bought a dairy thermometer for this). Pour it into a leftover plastic storebought yogurt conainer. Stir in 1 tbsp. of soy yogurt. Seal and place inside a saucepan filled with water, cover, and set inside the oven overnight. My oven is gas so the pilot keeps it at a constant temperature. Voila!

Subject: <none>
From: Ross Clement
Date: 1995/12/01
Newsgroups: rec.food.veg.cooking

mark silacci writes:
>Anyone out there know how to make soy-yoghurt?

Making soy yoghurt is really easy, what's hard is getting a vegan starting culture.

I'm ovo-lacto, so I made it by putting in three large spoonfuls of live milk yogurt into a jar with about 350 ml of soy milk. You can apparantly culture it at room temp, but I prefer the very slow method of leaving the soy milk (with culture) in the fridge for a few days. It took about 3-4 days to become yogurt. Of course it wasn't vegan. But, you can use some of the non-vegan soy yogurt to culture the next batch, and so on, becoming more vegan (and apparantly more tart) each generation.

The starting culture seems important. I made it with one brand ("Tim's Dairy"????), and it was OK, but another brand (?????) was simply no-go, even though it claimed to be live and listed several types of bacteria on the front.

I've looked around for commercial live soy yogurt, but haven't found any.

Subject: Re: yogurt making quandry
From: Tom Molnar
Date: 1996/02/28
Newsgroups: rec.food.veg.cooking

The recent post on cow's milk yogurt reminded me that I used to make soy yogurt. Maybe some of you would like to try it just for fun. It always used to work out reasonably well for me.

It tastes different, but so what? To me it wasn't a replacement for regular yogurt, it was a different way to eat soy milk and a healthy one at that!

A few things I learned about soy yogurt making was:

+ it's easier than making cow's milk yogurt
+ use plain regular fat soymilk (I used EdenSoy Original)
+ no need to boil soymilk like you do milk.
+ no need to worry unduly about initial temperatures, but the soymilk should be near room temperature to start.

Starter:

+ you can use a Tablespoon of regular yogurt as a starter SO LONG AS the culture is alive (look for the phrase "live culture" on the box), or
+ add a teaspoon of non-dairy acidophilus (the Solgar brand is vegan) and mix.

You can just mix the starter and the soymilk and pour it into the yogurt maker cups and let it reach the appropriate temperature. Save some yogurt to start your next batch. The longer you leave it, the more tart the flavor, and the older the starter (that is the number of times you recycle it) the sharper the flavor. I usually like to stop my yogurt as soon as the yogurt gets firm (usually 7 - 8 hours).

You don't need a yogurt maker if you have an oven that can reach roughly 100 - 105F (40 - 45C Max). My oven was had a pilot light that was always on and was always that temperature when the oven was off (the pilot stayed on). You can just mix starter and soymilk and put it into a glass (not plastic) container and leave it in the oven for 7 - 10 hours or so. Some electric ovens get that warm if the oven lightbulb is left on overnight.

Alternatively, almost any warm place will do.

The culture will only thrive in a narrow temperature range, too cool and it won't be active, too hot and it dies.