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culinary stuff
Apr. 24th, 2011 08:33 amWell, I was planning to postpone baking bread until after Passover, but I was running out, and it was Saturday, so what the hell. I made a batch of relatively-high-protein bread (a cup of soy flour, a cup of wheat gluten, several eggs, and some leftover egg whites in addition to the ordinary flour). There was about a cup and a half of spelt flour left in the bag, so I threw that in too. And some wheat germ, and wheat bran, and whole kamut grains (pre-cooked in water in the microwave). Both sourdough starter and commercial yeast, since I wasn't sure how the day's schedule would turn out and wanted to accelerate the process. The bread turned out pretty good. I still haven't figured out how to get the chewy crust that the folks at the farmer's market, or even Panera, have, but otherwise it's tasty.
Meanwhile, I had just read this post about making butter and slathering it on fresh-baked bread, and I thought "why not?" I hadn't made butter in twenty or thirty years, but vaguely remembered that one puts cream in a jar and shakes it for a while. So I did that... and then it became impossible to shake. I looked inside, and found that I had a smooth, homogeneous, not-going-anywhere whipped cream. I concluded that either the temperature was wrong, or you can't do this with homogenized, ultra-pasteurized grocery-store cream, and put the whipped cream in the fridge.
This morning, I RTFM'ed (or Googled or pick your favorite neoverb). Some of the directions specifically said "yes, you can do this with homogenized, ultra-pasteurized grocery-store cream," while others said "when it looks like whipped cream, you're almost done." So, on a tip from yet another on-line source, I whacked the jar against various unyielding objects for a few minutes... and suddenly it was shakeable again. And it made sloshing noises. And inside was a thin white liquid and something vaguely resembling butter. Magic! I rinsed it in cold water, worked out some more of the buttermilk, mixed in some freshly-ground sea salt, and spread it on a slice of yesterday's bread. Yep, it's tasty. Now that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
shalmestere is up, maybe we'll have some on pancakes for breakfast.
Meanwhile, I had just read this post about making butter and slathering it on fresh-baked bread, and I thought "why not?" I hadn't made butter in twenty or thirty years, but vaguely remembered that one puts cream in a jar and shakes it for a while. So I did that... and then it became impossible to shake. I looked inside, and found that I had a smooth, homogeneous, not-going-anywhere whipped cream. I concluded that either the temperature was wrong, or you can't do this with homogenized, ultra-pasteurized grocery-store cream, and put the whipped cream in the fridge.
This morning, I RTFM'ed (or Googled or pick your favorite neoverb). Some of the directions specifically said "yes, you can do this with homogenized, ultra-pasteurized grocery-store cream," while others said "when it looks like whipped cream, you're almost done." So, on a tip from yet another on-line source, I whacked the jar against various unyielding objects for a few minutes... and suddenly it was shakeable again. And it made sloshing noises. And inside was a thin white liquid and something vaguely resembling butter. Magic! I rinsed it in cold water, worked out some more of the buttermilk, mixed in some freshly-ground sea salt, and spread it on a slice of yesterday's bread. Yep, it's tasty. Now that
shalmestere is up, maybe we'll have some on pancakes for breakfast.
