culinary stuff

[hudebnik]

Well, 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 shalmestere is up, maybe we'll have some on pancakes for breakfast.

Comments

[stringlady.livejournal.com]

What he said - I think you'll need to add acid. We now often use buttermilk to replace the old (unpasteurized) sour milk. This will have a tangy taste, but I don't think it is sour enough to react to the baking soda alone.

Washing removes all the last traces of buttermilk - which doesn't keep as well - from the butter (which keeps quite well.)

I wouldn't just leave pasteurized milk out - it doesn't sour so much as go bad. I'd add a touch of commercial buttermilk or yogurt first, so the right bacteria (which have been removed) are present. Pasteurizing kills the good as well as the dangerous bacteria, so it's then anyone's guess what you'll get - and it's usually not pretty.

They used to just leave it out - but in a dairy, where they'd been making cultured products, and the right things were in the air. It's like making sourdough. It's easier to make a good reliable new sourdough if you've been using sourdough...