February 29, 2012

Breakfast of Champions - the Homemade Version

Throughout my pregnancy so far, yogurt has been one of my staples to add both protein and probiotics to my diet. However, being lactose intolerant, I was buying soymilk yogurt (which apparently can only "legally" be called "cultured soymilk" as the dairy industry has some kind of hold on the term "yogurt"), which is unfortunately not as readily available as standard yogurt, and twice as expensive. I considered the extra expense worth the nutritional benefits though. The cheapest option I could find was Stonyfield's soy yogurt six packs, 4 oz each, for around $3.99 a pop. I'd eat one a day and make it last almost a full week, but no sharing with Joe. :(

Then, Joe and I discovered that it is as easy to make "yogurt" out of soymilk as it is regular milk, and there's been no looking back! The economic difference of making our own soy yogurt is staggering, and there's plenty for Joe and me both, even if we want to eat more than 4 oz at a time. I can get a half gallon of organic soymilk for $2.50 and make enough yogurt for us both to have breakfast for a full week.

Banana, raisins, yogurt and granola - YUM!
We started with a culture saved from some goat milk yogurt we bought (which is delicious, lactose-intolerance friendly, but prohibitively expensive for a regular basis). The process is exactly like making dairy yogurt, and very easy in our Yogotherm yogurt maker, no electricity required. We have experimented with adding some tapioca starch to the mix to help thicken the yogurt, with varying results. Sometimes it makes little tapioca clumps, sometimes not, but it always tastes good.

We've gone about 8 weeks or so using a 1/2 cup of the previous batch to culture the next batch, but the last couple of batches have been going down hill. I'm blaming it on unpredictable refrigeration. This winter has NOT been good for providing us with consistently cool weather to keep things in a refrigerated state! The yogurt has not gone bad, but it has gotten a little weaker each time and the last batch, even with the tapioca starch, was more the consistency of buttermilk than yogurt. It made great pancakes, though! I'm thinking it might be time to grab a new, store-bought starter and make yogurt a quart at a time, twice as often.

An added benefit is that we've been finally using up our backlog of homemade jam from when we went a little jam crazy the year before last. We not really peanut butter and jelly people, and we rarely just have a piece of toast with jam, so most of our jars had gone unopened. Turns out, one jelly jar (1/2 pint size) is the perfect amount to mix in with a quart of yogurt for blackberry, wineberry, strawberry, etc. yogurt. Also, I've been inspired to start making our own granola, too, for which I'll share my recipe in a later post. 


2 comments:

Rachel said...

Shepard loves the Stoneyfield Farm baby soy yogurts, but like you said, they are expensive. Since he's so slight and is not inclined to eat as much as the others, I buy it for him.
I really don't like soy though and am going to check out the new Almond milk yogurts that one of our stores has started carrying. They drink almond milk, so maybe they'd like that!
For Grayson, I buy plain goatsmilk yogurt and mix it with a little vanilla almond milk so he can drink it out of a straw. He likes this...

I would love to get my own yogurt making and try make some almond milk (or coconut milk!) yogurts! Like you said, much more economical.. Hmm... we'll see...

I always enjoy hearing about dairy-free options, so please pass on anything you come up with! : )

missamandabeth said...

I prefer almond milk as well, but Joe's a big fan of soy milk. The soy milk has more protein than almond milk, so I've been happy to use it during my pregnancy.

It is so easy to make your own yogurt. I've been experimenting with various thickeners (tapioca starch and agar agar so far) as the soy milk makes a pretty thin yogurt, more like kefir than yogurt. I don't mind the thinness, though, as I use it almost like milk on my granola. And it makes a great milk substitute in pancakes!

You don't even really need a "yogurt maker", just somewhere to keep it warm for several hours after you've heated the milk and added the starter culture. Our yogurt maker is just a well insulated bucket. You could achieve the same results with a little lunch cooler and a towel maybe to nestle your milk container in.