Buttermilk question

If I make butter from slightly soured cream, is the liquid that's left over buttermilk? Can I use it in recipes in place of commercial buttermilk? And can I freeze it to store?

Thanks, Celia

Yes. Yes. Yes.

An important point: buttermilk from making butter is generally much thinner than cultured buttermilk, so it will act differently in, for example, pancakes. The acidity levels might be different than you normally find as well. (I'm assuming without knowing that most buttermilk sold in your area is cultured).

Best, Bob

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

You're right, Bob, most of our buttermilk is cultured, so it will be different, but I'm going to experiment with the leftovers and see what I can do with it.

Cheers, Celia

If I make butter from slightly soured cream, is the liquid that's left over buttermilk? Can I use it in recipes in place of commercial buttermilk? And can I freeze it to store?

Thanks, Celia

Let us know how the butter comes out (taste) and the buttermilk too. We always drank it when I was a kid. We liked to put a little salt and, some black pepper into it, and often we would crumble some leftover cold cornbread in too. Something else my Mom would do is make cottage cheese. She would allow milk to "sour" (left outside the icebox) we called that clabber. Usually there would be up to 5 gallons of clabber. she would then pour that into pillow cases that she had for that purpose only, and hang them from the backyard clothesline. A large washtub (a #3 tub) would be placed under the dripping bags to catch the whey which was fed to the pigs. the cottage cheese was also fed to the pigs AKA as the kids, and dad.

Bob, thanks - you know I always love hearing stories about your mum! She sounds like a very resourceful lady. The cream is in the fridge - we're letting it sour as per your and Bob Ross' suggestions - and will make butter from it in a couple of weeks. Are you sure we won't get massively ill making butter from cream that's so far past its expiration date?

Celia, I was thinking about your question last night and realized we only used sour cream to make butter on the farm. Here's a good explanation of why:

Since man began to make and use butter, he made it from ripened matured cream — sour cream. A change to unsoured or sweet cream butter came only during the 1940's. The reasons for the change were purely technical. Machines work most economically and profitably when they run permanently. Buttering machines were constructed that transformed sweet cream endlessly into butter. Sour cream at this time resisted this process. You had to fill the churn with one batch of sour cream, finish buttering, clean the churn and start again. Thus for purely technical reasons, people became used to sweet cream butter.

The standard book about butter making from 1915, Principles and Practise of Butter Making by McKay and Larson, does not even mention sweet cream butter. Here is what the authors say about making butter:


"To Produce Flavor and Aroma: The chief object of cream-ripening is to secure the desirable and delicate flavor and aroma which are so characteristic of good butter. These flavoring substances, so far as known, can only be produced by a process of fermentation. It is a well known fact that the best flavor in butter is obtained when the cream assumes a clean, pure, acid taste during the ripening. For this reason, it is essential to have the acid-producing germs predominate during the cream ripening; all other germs should, if possible, be excluded or suppressed. . . . When cream has been properly ripened, it is practically a pure culture of lactic-acid-producing germs, while sweet unpasteurized cream contains a bacterial flora, consisting of a great many types of desirable and undesirable germs."

Here a very important point is touched on: Lactic-acid-producing germs — very helpful for our digestion — are able to suppress all other unwanted, even pathogenic, germs. Lactic-acid fermentation is far superior to the heating of milk (pasteurization) in suppressing pathogenic germs. The pasteurization of the milk dramatically changes the fine composition of the raw milk. Even warming to 120 degrees Fahrenheit alters this fine composition that includes various proteins, vitamins, sugars and enzymes. Homogenization destroys the butterfat globules so much that the cream can no longer rise in the milk. The milk is denaturalized.

Buttering cream is, as we have seen, a purely mechanical process. The quality of the cream is the deciding factor, and this means that the cream should be properly ripened and contain a preponderance of lactic-acid producing germs. The cream ripening is usually achieved with the help of a starter. Besides a pure culture obtained by a laboratory, we can use as a natural starter a great many dairy products which are supposed to contain a preponderance of those germs involved in producing the desirable flavor in butter: buttermilk, sour cream, whey, sour whole or skimmed milk. A great advantage of sour cream buttering is that it produces, besides the butter, the refreshing and highly digestible buttermilk. The buttermilk coming out of modern sweet cream buttering tastes flat and cannot be used for human consumption. True buttermilk is no longer on the market. What is on the market under this name is not the result of the buttering process of sour cream. It is usually pasteurized skimmed milk, fermented with a laboratory culture.

The rest of the article is pretty interesting: http://www.realmilk.com/butter.html

Even more interesting, the McKay and Larsen book is online:

http://books.google.com/books?id=nBJKAA ... ng#PPR1,M1

Bob, thanks - you know I always love hearing stories about your mum! She sounds like a very resourceful lady. The cream is in the fridge - we're letting it sour as per your and Bob Ross' suggestions - and will make butter from it in a couple of weeks. Are you sure we won't get massively ill making butter from cream that's so far past its expiration date?

"C", I don't remember my Mom putting the cream into either the icebox (when I was very small), or the propane powered refrigerator when I got a bit bigger. (we had no electricity in our home until I was about 10 years of age, so either an icebox,or the propane fridge. Anyway, my Mom would take several days of cream that she had skimmed from the milk, and put it in a one gallon ceramic crock. She had about 5 of those, plus several 5 gallon crocks she used for making pickles. She would cover the gallon crock with a cloth and tie a string on to hold the cloth in place. This kept pests out of the cream and allowed air to enter. When the cream was sufficiently soured (fermented) she would put it into one or more glass widemouth jars put the lid on, and give one of the kids the chore of churning. This meant that we had to agitate the jar by shaking until the butter "came" then she rinsed the whey from the butter using water as cold as she could get it, and kneading the butter until the water ran clear. this was then put into a 1 pound butter mold to form and placed in the icebox. Mom always used raw milk straight from the cow, I am not sure that you can take pasteurized milk and make a decent sour cream butter...but I haven't tried so I don't know that either. Here is a link. http://www.realmilk.com/butter.html

"C" from the link to Google books that Bob Ross left for you you can actually download the book on making butter. I just did and will save it in my food folder. Just FYI.

Bob,
Thank you for an absolutely fascinating insight into butter. Despite my having read "sweet cream butter" on packages for lo these 45 years now, I never thought to question what, if anything, it signified. Having now been edumacated on the topic, I am of half a mind to make my own, just to experience for myself what the flavor difference is.

Many thanks,
Mark Lipton

p.s. The Syrah research turned up nothing particularly new or interesting. Thanks again for your help.

Bob and Bob, thank you both, that was an extremely interesting read. I'm happy to let the cream sour in the fridge for a couple of weeks, but I'm curious, Bob R, what you think the difference would be between the cream we have access to, which is always pasteurized (as all dairy products have to be in Australia) and unpasteurized cream? Will it still produce the same lactic bacteria? And will the resultant buttermilk in that case still be useful for anything?

Bobby H, the butter we've made has always been delicious, even though pasteurized. I laughed at the idea of you shaking the living daylights out of a jar of cream until it split - must have felt like ages to a child. When we make it now, it seems so easy, although I'd love to find an old-fashioned butter pat to make it in. I wonder if I could use a wooden shortbread mould...hmmm.

Mark, if you're interested, I wrote about buttermaking a couple of weeks ago on my blog. We make our own butter at home often and surprisingly it works out marginally cheaper than buying cheap butter at the supermarket!

Bob and Bob, thank you both, that was an extremely interesting read. I'm happy to let the cream sour in the fridge for a couple of weeks, but I'm curious, Bob R, what you think the difference would be between the cream we have access to, which is always pasteurized (as all dairy products have to be in Australia) and unpasteurized cream? Will it still produce the same lactic bacteria? And will the resultant buttermilk in that case still be useful for anything?

Celia, a couple of thoughts, one that occured to me near Buttermilk Falls here in Franklin Lakes a few minutes ago. [I just realized where I was when I thought of this -- the falls are about 50 feet high and not really much to see at the moment -- we are in a drought -- but are one of the features of one of my favorite walks near our house. More at http://www.franklinlakes-oakland-reales ... rofile.htm ]

As I wrote briefly, you can freeze sour milk for future use. The freezing may kill the bacteria or at least slow them down so you need to add time to not only thaw out the frozen sour milk but for the bacteria to work again. And, be sure your sour milk is cold when you put it in the freezer -- it's amazing how warm foods will heat a freezer compartment and of course water will condense in the sour milk and freeze which may affect its behaviour.

My belief is that pasturization doesn't adversely affect the ability to make butter. Pasturized milk seems to sour pretty much the way unpasturized milk does, although I've never done a side by side comparison. The bacteria seems to live in the air. I do know that difference occur from place to place, even farm to farm in my area of southern Wisconsin. We would share cultures from farm to farm and it was easy to taste the difference in our butter if we used cultures from the Becker farm just two miles away.

Bob, I had another thought - I wonder if you could use yoghurt to sour your cream? We make our own yoghurt at home - from milk, milk powder and a bit of the last batch - and the bacteria in yoghurt is lactic-producing, I believe?

Bob, I had another thought - I wonder if you could use yoghurt to sour your cream? We make our own yoghurt at home - from milk, milk powder and a bit of the last batch - and the bacteria in yoghurt is lactic-producing, I believe?

Worth a try Celia. I never did it but might work well. Try a couple of different yogurts -- the Greek style might be very promising. But I'm really out of my depth. Love to hear what you come up with.

As a happy South Beach Diner, butter is a fond memory, but I'd be willing to revisit the butter cups to try something interesting. There's something magical about seeing the butter appear.

The Syrah research turned up nothing particularly new or interesting. Thanks again for your help.

Thank you for the update, Mark. It's sort of frustrating -- I fantasize that French researchers have put together a treasure trove of info and will one day publish it all somewhere. Best, Bob

Bob, the cultured butter was a huge success! I was able to use the cultured buttermilk as well - I've just posted about it here..
http://figjamandlimecordial.com/2009/03 ... -making-2/

Cheers, Celia

When the cream was sufficiently soured (fermented) she would put it into one or more glass widemouth jars put the lid on, and give one of the kids the chore of churning. This meant that we had to agitate the jar by shaking until the butter "came" then she rinsed the whey from the butter using water as cold as she could get it, and kneading the butter until the water ran clear.

This is one of my fondest memories my childhood on my paternal grandmother's farm. Rendering the butter was my job every morning, and I did it just this way. Only I was no more than 4-8 years old (after whic my parents got divorced). So the butter I "made" was just enough for the large pan of biscuits Big Mama made for breakfast every morning. The left over clabber they ate for breakfast or lunch with the left over cornbread from dinner the night before. We called it cush (I hated that stuff). Wow! Thanks for the walk down memory lane.

Here's my buttermilk question: When can you tell if it's gone bad?

Here's my buttermilk question: When can you tell if it's gone bad?

Barb, if you ever keep buttermilk around too long it will (for lack of a better term) stink! Now, some might say that buttermilk is already "soured" to which I say yes, thank the stars. Buttermilk does have a fermented aroma, but it also has a bit of a sweet smell, a fresh smell if you will. When it goes over the hill that fresh smell goes with it, and it plainly stinks. The trick is to either drink it up or use it up in cooking long before it gets to the top of that hill, much less goes over it. Buttermilk biscuits and buttermilk cornbread, or buttermilk pancakes and waffles are seriously good eating. Like the car commercial said, "who could ask for anything more" I must admit that I drink the cultured buttermilk one can buy anywhere, but I would really like a source of raw milk cream to make my own butter and buttermilk with.