The Book Of Tofu

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Combine soy flour and 3 cups water in a small saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly. Proceed as for Homemade Soymilk, pressing soymilk through a cloth sack; rinse okara with 1/2 cup water and re-press. Now bring soymilk to a boil and simmer for 5 minutes before serving.

For variety, the soymilk may be cooked in a double boiler for about 50 minutes; omit the second cooking.

SOYMILK YOGURT
(MAKES 3-1/4 CUPS)

Since soymilk ferments faster than dairy milk, soymilk yogurt takes less time and less starter, and involves much less trouble than dairy yogurt. Soymilk yogurt requires no special incubating and heating equipment and can be prepared at room temperature. When prepared from homemade soymilk, the cost is about one-sixth that of commercial dairy yogurt, while the protein content is often twice as high. The bacteria in the starter? fresh plain yogurt?produce lactic acid which acts as a protein solidifier.

3-1/4 cups Homemade Soymilk
1 teaspoon yogurt

Allow freshly made soymilk to cool to slightly warmer than body temperature (105° to 110°). Remove thin yuba film from surface of soymilk and reserve. Stir yogurt into soymilk, then pour inoculated milk into a clean jar. Cover and allow to stand at room temperature (70° F or above) for 14 to 18 hours. When ready, set aside several tablespoons of the new yogurt to use as a starter for the next batch. Serve yogurt as is, sweetened with a little honey, or mixed with sliced bananas, raisins, toasted wheat germ, grated coconut, apple wedges, chopped nuts, sunflower seeds, or granola. Serve yuba sprinkled with a few drops of shoyu (Japanese soy sauce).

If cultured for too short a time, the tang and subtle sourness of fine yogurt will not develop; if cultured for too long, the yogurt will sour and separate into curds and whey.

Store-bought soymilk can be made into yogurt by simply mixing in starter at room temperature and proceeding as above. To decrease fermentation time, add 1 teaspoon honey before inoculation, or use a little more starter or an incubator set at 100° to 110°.

RICH SOYMILK
(SERVES 1)

This is the most popular way of serving soymilk throughout East Asia. Generally soymilk is served steaming hot out of the tofu shop cauldron; but during the summer it is also served chilled. The latter has a richer, creamier consistency, a deeper natural sweetness, and a flavor more like that of dairy milk. In China and Taiwan, a well-known breakfast drink called tento chiang or tien-chiang (sweet soymilk) consists of soymilk sweetened with sugar or molasses. It is usually served with deep-fried bread sticks wrapped in a chapati.

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