Ask Allie!
Ask Allie is our advice column, where you can ask all your food-related questions to get digestible answers! No question is off limits!
To have your question answered in Ask Allie posts, please use the form on our website. If you prefer to be anonymous, just say so in the form and we’ll leave your name out when we answer it in the blog! Note that some submissions may be edited for clarity.
Do you have any plans to develop a vegan heirloom yogurt starter that's more plant-milk agnostic? Or even just expanding to other common plant-milks like soy or oat milk?
And do you have any tips or resources you could recommend for a person that wants to develop a plant-milk agnostic heirloom culture?
— Chris
I’ve looped Sabrina in on this, since she’s the one who does all our sourcing and product development (so I can’t answer the question as to whether we’ll be expanding our vegan products).
As I understand it (I am not an expert on vegan yogurts), you can culture pretty much any yogurt with any vegan milk, but you will need thickeners and/or stabilizers to approximate the yogurt texture.
My own personal inclination, since I lean pretty heavily toward laziness while fermenting, would be to do vegan milks with milk kefir grains. Feeding them 1t date paste per quart of milk negates the need for periodically culturing your grains in mammal milk.
That may not really be your speed, and if it’s not, then I’d use thickeners/stabilizers with the milk of your choice and the culture that fits the flavor profile you’re looking for. If I were doing vegan yogurt experiments, I’d be inclined to use agar agar or mastic. You probably also could use Irish moss, which is commonly used for gelling, as such.
Yep. lost my Viili (long). Not sure why; watery with lumps. Help if you can.
— David
Okay, it sounds like you over-fermented it, either by using too much culture or by letting it go too long. Actually, if you moved the container around while it was fermenting, that also can break a ropey yogurt (they get fussy about that, and especially viili). Try to reculture it, but it may legitimately be short viili now.
I am going to activate the Ancient Einkorn Starter Soon. Will refrigerating my active culture between bread baking hurt it?
— Patrick
Not at all, though you shouldn’t do so until it’s fully activated (day 5 at earliest, but preference for day 7).
