Bread Maker Soy Yoghurt 面包机豆浆优格

My quest for delicious homemade soy yogurt began when I chanced upon a recipe book written by a senior Japanese. The 65-year-old author attributed his natural black hair and healthy body to consuming his homemade soy yoghurt daily.

It took me about 3 weeks and more than 10 attempts to look for the best way to produce a thick, creamy and smooth soy yoghurt with unnoticeable sour taste. Most important of all, the yogurt still retain the nice aroma of soy milk without any acid smell.

My family and I do not favour the smell and taste of the store-bought dairy yoghurt despite the many benefits the fermented milk can provide. Now, with the new found soy yoghurt, my family would not reject yoghurt any more 😋

Yield: 4x200ml pudding bottles*
*  I bought the pudding bottles from online store. Just key "pudding bottle" to search for seller :)

Bread maker: Mayer MMBM12

Ingredients

400~475ml soy milk, lightly sweetened*

60g plain Greek yogurt

* The medium pack of soy milk I used has a volume of 475ml.

Directions

1. Pour hot water into four 200ml-pudding bottles to sterilized them. Invert them to partially dry them. Set aside.

2. Warm up the cold soy milk to about 45°C in a pot.

Stir occasionally to ensure the soy milk has been heated evenly.

If you do not have a cooking thermometer, just feel the back of the spoon. It should be just slightly warmer than our finger temperature.

The purpose of warming up the soy milk is to facilitate the mixing of the soy milk and Greek yogurt. I found the two ingredients could not produce a homogeneous mixture when mix in cold temperature.

3. Transfer about 100g of warm soy milk into a small bowl. And remove the pot of warm soy milk from the stove.

Add 60g of cold Greek yoghurt to the soy milk.

Stir to mix into a smooth mixture

4. Pour the soy-yoghurt mixture back to mix with the remaining warm soy milk in the pot.

5. Divide the mixture among 4 pudding bottles and cover them with lids.

6. Remove the kneading blade from the bread pan of the bread maker.

Line the bottom of the bread pan with a small damp towel.

Place the covered pudding bottles into the bread pan.

Close the lid, select "Function 14 Attractive Yogurt" and start the program. The whole process will take 8 hours to complete. If you prepare the yoghurt in the morning, it will complete in late afternoon or evening.

The program ends.

7. Remove the warm yoghurt from the bread maker.

And let them cool to room temperature, without opening the lids, for about 2 hours. Next, keep the yoghurt in the fridge till the next day, about 12 to 24 hours later.  The yoghurt will be more watery if you consume on the same day, or just a few hours of refrigeration.The longer you keep, the creamier and thicker yoghurt you will get.

The yoghurts just out of bread maker

More than 24 hours of refrigeration.

Suitable Toppings

1. Dark brown sugar or Sucanat granules.

2. Crispy Mixed Cereal

Prepared on 28 Feb 2018
Kept in fridge for 2 days, the yogurt was creamier and thicker. Smell like soya milk without acid taste 😋

Prepared on 26 Feb 2018
The soy milk was warm in a small claypot before adding cold Greek yoghurt. The mixture was kept in room temperature for 24 hours. The clay pot, which has a thicker wall, keep the mixture warm for a longer period of time. This is the method employed by the senior Japanese who shared the recipe.

The yoghurt was separated into a thicker upper layer and a watery whey layer at the bottom.

Prepared on 12 March 2018
Warm up the soy milk in the pot before adding cold greek yoghurt. The mixture was kept in room temperature of about 28 to 29°C for 24 hours.

The yoghurt was firmer at the top layer, and had a stronger acid smell and taste :(

After stirring the entire yoghurt, it appeared smooth. But taste-wise, not very favourable :|
Maybe I should let the yoghurt refrigerate after 12 hours of fermentation in room temperature, instead of keeping it in room temperature for 24 hours.

Prepared on 16 March 2018
Using bread maker to do the fermentation. I did not open the lid of the bread maker throughout the entire fermentation session. The stable temperature may have resulted in a more homogeneous yoghurt without scattered fat accumulate at the surface :)

Sharing my observation

1. The warm soy milk helped to integrate the dairy yoghurt better than cold one during mixing.

2. Keep the temperature constant helped to produce a smoother and curd-like yoghurt in either room temperature or bread maker environment.

3. Keep the yoghurt for more than 24 hours to get a thicker and firmer yoghurt. Therefore, for yoghurt fermented in bread maker, which only needs 8 hours to ferment, it is better to keep it in the fridge and consume after 24 hours.

4. Keep the bottles of yoghurt closed at all time to prevent any "Alien intruder" from invading and spoil the yoghurt.

5. If your yoghurt smell or taste unusual, discard them!