Making a better butter batter
A few months ago I happened to be looking at the label of the butter we buy, and I noticed that it has two ingredients: cream and "natural flavorings". What the heck are natural flavorings in butter? They make it taste more like butter? Isn't butter a singular ingredient by itself? I looked at the butter I had at my house, and it said the same thing. Something weird is going on here.
In hindsight, it seems odd that I've never made butter before now--I've never even overwhipped cream enough to make it by accident. It's super-easy to make fresh butter--just shake (or whip) cream for a while, and all of a sudden it happens (most grocery-store cream has been ultra-pasteurized, which sometimes interferes with the process, so you may want to look into this before shaking a jar of cream for half an hour and not getting any butter). But as I was poking around online, I started learning about the fabled "cultured butter", which is made from cream that has been allowed to ferment with the same bacteria that give tang to yogurt and buttermilk. Cultured butter is supposed to taste way better (in fact, the "natural flavorings" in store butter are supposed to make it taste like it's been cultured), and anything that involves bacteria sounds fun to me, so I decided to try making it.
I was very disappointed in the quality of information online, and I've decided that once I figure out how to do this, I'm going to write a book. Or at least a blog. It's very difficult to figure out which bacteria and how much you should add to culture your cream. So I just started experimenting. I made several batches of butter with different amounts of store-bought yogurt and buttermilk to supply the starter cultures. Then we had a butter taste test, comparing my batches to the store butter we had in the fridge. Here are Jill and Travis developing their butter palates.
Yes, this was a double-blind tasting, and we were taking notes. We do not take this lightly. We all ate enough plain butter to feel a little ill for a while afterwards.
The results were clear: store butter has a nasty aftertaste and a waxy texture once you start thinking about it (and eating enough of it straight up to really taste it). My butter batches were all better than the store ones, and the more buttermilk I added, the better.
So we are on the right track, and now I'm really getting serious about this. I'm going to order some butter cultures from various companies that supply commercial starter cultures, although I am not happy about having to order cultures all the time, when I am perfectly capable of growing my own bacteria, thank you very much. But I need decide what to grow and then figure out whether we really have the facilities to grow our own. Man, I wish I still worked in a lab right now. This would be totally simple if I had a few incubators and maybe a nice shaker and an autoclave...and a centrifuge and a really good scale and a liquid nitrogen freezer...
Meanwhile, we made croissants out of my homemade butter. Mmmmmm.
In hindsight, it seems odd that I've never made butter before now--I've never even overwhipped cream enough to make it by accident. It's super-easy to make fresh butter--just shake (or whip) cream for a while, and all of a sudden it happens (most grocery-store cream has been ultra-pasteurized, which sometimes interferes with the process, so you may want to look into this before shaking a jar of cream for half an hour and not getting any butter). But as I was poking around online, I started learning about the fabled "cultured butter", which is made from cream that has been allowed to ferment with the same bacteria that give tang to yogurt and buttermilk. Cultured butter is supposed to taste way better (in fact, the "natural flavorings" in store butter are supposed to make it taste like it's been cultured), and anything that involves bacteria sounds fun to me, so I decided to try making it.
I was very disappointed in the quality of information online, and I've decided that once I figure out how to do this, I'm going to write a book. Or at least a blog. It's very difficult to figure out which bacteria and how much you should add to culture your cream. So I just started experimenting. I made several batches of butter with different amounts of store-bought yogurt and buttermilk to supply the starter cultures. Then we had a butter taste test, comparing my batches to the store butter we had in the fridge. Here are Jill and Travis developing their butter palates.
Yes, this was a double-blind tasting, and we were taking notes. We do not take this lightly. We all ate enough plain butter to feel a little ill for a while afterwards.
The results were clear: store butter has a nasty aftertaste and a waxy texture once you start thinking about it (and eating enough of it straight up to really taste it). My butter batches were all better than the store ones, and the more buttermilk I added, the better.
So we are on the right track, and now I'm really getting serious about this. I'm going to order some butter cultures from various companies that supply commercial starter cultures, although I am not happy about having to order cultures all the time, when I am perfectly capable of growing my own bacteria, thank you very much. But I need decide what to grow and then figure out whether we really have the facilities to grow our own. Man, I wish I still worked in a lab right now. This would be totally simple if I had a few incubators and maybe a nice shaker and an autoclave...and a centrifuge and a really good scale and a liquid nitrogen freezer...
Meanwhile, we made croissants out of my homemade butter. Mmmmmm.
posted by The Cooking Doctor at
12:33 AM
2 Comments:
That sounds wonderful (and fun)! I can't wait to taste after you've perfected things. What's the difference between regular butter and Irish butter?
You could call up and talk to the Annalis (?) at Johnson's Acres Dairy. She has a raw-milk dairy and makes cultured butter all the time. Being that it is raw-milk, I believe she can ferment her own. But in the interest of science you may want to try it, but then, it is raw-milk and you can't just buy it from her unless you do a raw-milk share, etc. etc.
I'm curious if your taste tests include Organic Valley cultured butter and if it tasted waxy also?
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