Yogurt Bear

6 oz yougurt	250
Yougurt Bear	400
taco + on. ring	400
grapes	100
pizza	350
	1500

I found this list written inside the cover of a book* I've had since high school. As a late-80s teen, I was an inveterate dieter and liked to keep logs of my caloric intake. I hope that after consuming the pizza @ 350 calories I went on to eat a vegetable or two, but probably not.

Even then, I had a thing for yogurt (even if I couldn't spell it). I'm not sure what a Yogurt Bear is, but my best guess is a frozen yogurt franchise, like TCBY (The Country's Best Yogurt) or ICBIY (I Can't Believe It's Yogurt). My high-school years coincided with frozen yogurt's heyday. The landscape of suburban Des Moines, Iowa, was dotted with frozen yogurt shops, along with Mrs. Fields' Cookies and bagel stores. Then, of course, those went away and were replaced by Starbucks and . . . what else? Taco Bell? Panera? Cold Stone Creamery? The next time I'm in Des Moines I'll have to make a survey. The "6 oz. yogurt" with which I started my day was probably a single-serving cup of yogurt, like Dannon, although 250 calories seems a little steep. Contemporary 6-oz. cups of yogurt run about 150 calories if I'm not mistaken. Maybe yogurt used to be richer.

At any rate, yogurt is one of my lifelong favorite foods. I don't eat very much dairy these days because it makes my allergies act up, among other reasons. I've tried commercial soy yogurt, and it just doesn't cut it. The brands at my disposal, Silk, Whole Soy, and Wildwood, are inadequate. Silk is watery and goopy, Whole Soy Plain is heavily sweetened and therefore unusable for savory applications, and Wildwood is the worst of all. I only found Wildwood recently and had high hopes, but it's chalky and acrid. All three of these brands have added starches and seaweeds and stuff, and while this may thicken them, I think the resulting texture and mouthfeel are objectionable. Also, they are expensive.

But there is a happy solution to this dilemma. Homemade soy yogurt is delicious, though time-consuming and temperamental.

I don't have a yogurt maker, but I do have a food dehydrator, a big plastic box with a fan and a heating element. It looks like it came straight from the 70s. It's by far the most esoteric piece of kitchen equipment I own. It's great for making yogurt, raising bread, and drying tomatoes.

Homemade Soy Yogurt

1. Mix 1/4 c. soy or dairy yogurt with about a quart of soy milk. Whisk to combine completely in a glass bowl with a lid.
   
2. Put lidded bowl in dehydrator set to 115 degrees. (If you don't have a dehydrator, this site has some ideas for alternate incubation methods.)
3. Leave for 5-8 hours.
4. When yogurt is set, remove from dehydrator. Refrigerate for a few hours. Then drain the yogurt to desired consistency. If it has set to a nice firm block, you may be able to tip off the extra whey. If it's broken up, then put the yogurt into a colander lined with a piece of cheesecloth. You can drain it just a little, or drain for a long time for a thicker yogurt.
   
5. Whisk yogurt until smooth.
   

Notes

• To state the obvious, for vegan soy yogurt, use soy yogurt as a starter rather than dairy yogurt. I've gotten my best results with a dairy yogurt starter, but soy yogurt works just fine. Try to pick a soy yogurt starter that you like the taste of. When I use Wildwood, I can taste the nasty additives in my new yogurt.
• I've used Brown Cow Cream Top and Fage as dairy yogurt starters. Both worked great.
  
• For best results, use freshly purchased yogurt as your starter. I've tried using homemade yogurt as a starter for future batches, but it hasn't worked well. Perhaps over generations, the balance of yogurt bacteria changes as the powerful ones push out the weaker ones.
  
• I get the best results from Westsoy Organic Original soy milk. I get good results from Silk soy milk and from Trader Joe's soy milk. I've gotten my worst results from Soy Dream soy milk.
  
• I don't sterilize all my equipment in boiling water, as some soy yogurt makers suggest. I do use clean equipment that's been washed in a dishwasher that has a "disinfect" cycle.
• I've only had one bad batch of yogurt ever. Instead of getting nice and custardy, the milk formed into a slimy, ropy structure. Like an idiot, I tasted it. Nothing bad happened to me, but since, I've realized I was probably growing a colony of "ropy bacteria." If this happens to you, throw it away.
• Occasionally the top surface of the yogurt after incubation will have a slight rosy discoloration. I've worried that this is some sort of bacterial contamination, but since it usually happens, I've concluded it's benign, and maybe just oxidation. After straining and whisking the yogurt, it never comes back.
• I tried making yogurt with homemade almond milk, and it utterly failed.
  

Soy yogurt made by the above method is not particularly cheap, especially if you use premium soy milk. To make this a truly economical undertaking, I'll have to use homemade soy milk.

*How I Got To Be Perfect by Jean Kerr. Jean Kerr is my favorite humor writer ever.