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Making Soya Yoghurt (Soy Yogurt)
   


Soya Yoghurt is real live-cultured yoghurt, made from soya milk (soymilk).

Yoghurt can also be made with some degree of success from other plant milks,
such as oat or almond milks - see bottom of page.

Making live soya yoghurt at home is easy.
This method uses an insulated yoghurt flask,
but it can be made without this - see tips in the text.

Makes 1 litre of yoghurt.



Ok this looks like a lot of steps....but really, it's easy...we're just holding your hand

Click on the photos to enlarge.  
What you need
Equipment & Ingredients

You'll need a Yoghurt Flask, a one litre Yoghurt Beaker (and a small one to store the culture batch), a table spoon, a small whisk, a litre of unsweetened Soya Milk, a tablespoon of sugar, a starter culture, and some boiling water.

The culture is explained below - usually it's a tablespoon of shop-bought soya yoghurt, or some you've saved from the last batch.

The Yoghurt Flask
The Yoghurt Flask

The flask consists of the body, a cradle and a lid.

This one is an EasiYo flask, available in the UK from Lakeland

Scald your equipment
Scald your equipment

Cleanliness is vital when making cultured foods. Use plenty of boiling water to scald your beaker and utensils.

(The plastic beaker isn't suitable for full sterilising, which would be to fully immerse all your equipment in water under a rolling boil for 10 minutes)

Stand for 1 minute
Stand for 1 minute

Leave the utensils to scald for a minute or so.

Be careful when you pour the water away!

Open your Soya Milk
Open your Soya Milk

Use UHT (long life) unsweetened soya milk that contains nothing but soya beans and water. Don't use sweetened soya milk as the sweetener is usually apple juice, which affects fermentation. You must also avoid the gums and flavourings used in some unsweetened varieties.

If your soya milk is fresh or home made, you need to scald it to 85C (180F), which is just below boiling, then cool it.

Fill two-thirds
Fill two-thirds

Pour in the soya milk to around two-thirds full.

(If you fill the beaker at this stage you might spill it when adding the sugar and culture)

Warm 1 minute
Warm 1 minute

Warm the beaker of soya milk for 1 minute, full power, in a microwave. It only needs to be lukewarm, to dissolve the sugar.

No microwave? Gently warm it in a pan on the hob.

Add tablespoon sugar
Add tablespoon sugar

Adding a tablespoon of sugar aids the fermentation

(soya milk has less natural sugar than dairy milk).

The sugar also improves the taste of the yoghurt as it helps increase acidity. Any sugar will do, according to taste.

Stir the sugar in
Stir the sugar in
Stir the sugar well into the warmed soya milk, until fully dissolved. A small whisk works best for this.
Add tablespoon live yoghurt
Add tablespoon live yoghurt

Add a tablespoon of live soya yoghurt, either saved from your last batch, or from shop-bought soya yoghurt. Mix well with the small whisk to ensure thorough blending.

In the UK, you can use Sojade or Sojasun yoghurts as a starter, which you can find at supermarkets or places like Goodness Direct

No starter? You can us a freeze-dried culture, which comes in packets. It's available in the UK from Wholistic Research and is widely available in the US.

Top up with soya milk
Top up with soya milk
Fill the beaker almost full with the remaining soya milk.
Put lid on beaker
Put lid on beaker
Screw the lid tight on to avoid spills.
Fill flask with boiling water
Fill flask with boiling water

Pour freshly boiled water into the insulated yoghurt flask.

No Yoghurt Flask? Wrap the beaker in a towel, with a hot-water bottle (hot-water bag) sandwiched in the layers, and keep the whole thing in a warm place.

You can also buy electric yoghurt flasks which maintain a steady temperature through a small heating element.

Water level to top of cradle
Water level to top of cradle

The boiling water should reach just above the top of the cradle. The flask may have tips on varying the water level slightly, depending on room temperature.

The tempearture range for fermentation is narrow, and a small change in water level can have a big effect.

Put beaker in flask
Put beaker in flask
The beaker will sit in the cradle inside the flask, partially submersed in the boiling water.
Put lid on flask
Put lid on flask
The flask has a screw lid, which should be tightly closed to keep the heat in.
Stand overnight
Stand overnight
Stand the yoghurt flask overnight, or for around 8 hours. The fermentation time can range from 6 hours to 12 hours or more.
Remove beaker from flask
Remove beaker from flask
Unscrew the lid of the flask and remove the beaker. Drain away the water from the flask.
Check yoghurt has worked
Check yoghurt has worked
The yoghurt should be either thick or set. If it's still runny, it may need longer, or you might have a problem - see troubleshooting.
Check consistency
Check consistency
Use a spoon to look at the consistency the yoghurt has achieved.
Scald small beaker
Scald small beaker
Use boiling water to scald a small beaker or screw-top jar, in which to keep the starter culture.
Save tablespoon for culture
Save tablespoon for culture

Save one or two tablespoons of the freshly made live yoghurt in the small beaker, ready for next time.

The starter is taken away from the main beaker of yoghurt, to keep it as sterile as possible.

Refrigerate Yoghurt
Refrigerate Yoghurt

Store the main beaker and the starter beaker in the fridge, where fermentation will complete. The yoghurt will get firmer and thicker as it cools.

The yoghurt will keep for 7 to 10 days if stored in the fridge at 3C (38F) .

The Culture Cycle

When you need more yoghurt, you can start again with your saved culture batch, and the process repeats. The culture can be used for several "generations" before becoming "tired". The culture becomes less effective over time, and should be discarded. You will then need to buy some more shop-bought yoghurt, or use a dried culture, to start the cycle again.

Trust your senses

Good yoghurt doesn't smell of anything, and tastes fresh and mildly acidic. If it ever smells or tastes 'off', discard it along with your culture batch, and begin with a new culture.

Troubleshooting

Yoghurt hasn't worked? Check your culture was good - the starter yoghurt must be 'LIVE' and not all natural yoghurts are - check the packaging before you buy. Don't miss out the sugar - it's needed for fermentation. Try leaving the yoghurt for longer, or raising the water level in the flask a little. Don't use sweetened soya milk, as the sweetener (often apple juice) might inhibit the fermentation. Try another brand of soya milk - some brands have thickeners or additives that affect fermentation (UK experience - Provamel Organic Unsweetened is consistently good).

Yoghurt smells or tastes "off"? This is usually an old tired culture, or down to poor hygiene. Sometimes bad bacteria can taint the yoghurt if the friendly bacteria aren't strong enough to produce the acid needed for preservation. Discard, and begin again.

Strained Yoghurt

You can also take your soya yoghurt making a stage further, and make strained yoghurt. Scald a square of muslin cloth 50cm by 50cm (20 ins by 20 ins) in boiling water, drain and use to line a mesh sieve of 20cm (8 ins) diameter. Suspend the sieve over a bowl. Pour in a litre of yoghurt, then gather up the edges of the muslin to cover the yoghurt. Put the bowl in the fridge for an hour or two, until the yoghurt has reduced by half, and the bowl contains the clear whey which has drained through (drink or discard it). The yoghurt may be thick and lumpy, so push it through the sieve into the bowl, or use a stick blender to make it really smooth and creamy.

If you let the yoghurt drain for longer, until all the whey is gone, you'll make yoghurt cheese. You can weight the muslin on top of the yoghurt cheese to press out even more whey, and make a firm textured soya yoghurt cheese called qurd, which is good for making dairy-free cheesecakes. See our Qurd demo here

Rich Yoghurt

You can make a thicker, creamier yoghurt by adding additional oil to the mix. You can't add vegetable oil directly as it will tend to separate during fermentation, but you can add soyoli (oil and soya milk emulsion). Add a tablespoon of soyoli to your warm soya milk, before adding the sugar and culture, then proceed as normal. Make your soyoli with flax oil (flaxseed oil) to make an Omega-3 enriched yoghurt.

Other Plant Milk Yoghurts

Amongst those we've tested, soya is the best plant milk for making yoghurt, but you'll get varying success with other plant milks. Mostly what happens, if they work at all, is you'll get a large amount of clear whey on top of a reduced amount of yoghurt. This reduced yield makes them a little uneconomic for your everyday yoghurt, but for a special treat, the oat milk yoghurt in particular is especially creamy and delicious. You may need to strain these yoghurts (as instructions above).

Oat Milk (commercial oat milk): Low yielding yoghurt (less than half). Splits to curds and whey. Taste and texture is good, sweet and not oaty. Strained oat milk yoghurt is amazingly creamy and delicious.

Almond Milk (commercial almond milk): Low yielding yoghurt (less than half). Splits to curds and whey. Texture is a little grainy. Taste is nutty.

Quinoa Mik (commercial quinoa milk): Low yielding yoghurt (less than a third). Splits to loose curds and whey and requires straining. Texture, once strained is smooth and creamy. Taste of quinoa remains quite strong so this is less useful as a plain yoghurt.

Rice Milk (commercial rice milk): Results are poor. Yield is probably only the original solids from the milk of around 10% volume. Tastes fine, but this is not really a yoghurt.

Untested: Hazlenut Milk, Cashew Milk, Pea Milk (no longer available in the UK), Lupin Milk (not available commercially) .

 
Making Soya Yoghurt

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