**Warning - this is a long post**
Normally, I'm not one to stray very far from a recipe - I might add or remove various spices, but I don't venture out too far. But today I was making bread and thought I would try using butter instead of vegetable oil. I happened to look on the back of the oil bottle the last time I was at the store and was disgusted to find out it was made from solely soy beans. UGH!!
If you have no idea what I'm talking about, do some research on soy beans grown in "good ol' USA". They are genetically engineered to withstand the weed-killing product known as Round-Up. So the farmers plant these soy beans, then they can spray Round-Up and not kill their crop. Makes sense but the soy plant is still absorbing those harmful chemicals, which goes to the bean, which is mass produced and processed into just about everything we eat. The company that makes Round-Up is the one that genetically engineered the soy bean and their primary board members are also the heads of USDA, FDA, and the like. They have also just come out with an alfalfa that is resistant to Round-Up. Alfalfa is fed to animals, which then become or produce our food (milk, meat, eggs, etc). Sorry, I have a tendency to get off topic.Anyhow, the bread recipe (found here) I have been using for a few years now is fairly simple. But today I tried using 1/4 cup of melted butter instead of 1/4 cup of oil. The result - EXCELLENT!!! Yea!! Now, when I get my cow, I have another reason to make butter (like I really need another reason....YUMMY). Especially since I make bread just about every other day!
* 6/11/2011 - I have recently been substituting 1 TBSP bread (or all -purpose) flour with 1 TBSP of potato flour and the results are a softer bread. This makes an excellent sandwich bread but needs to be toasted a little longer to hold up to firm butter or refrigerated peanut butter.
Since I was making bread, I decided to use the older cream I had leftover from last week's milk pickup to make my own butter. Boy, do I wish that I would have thought of that BEFORE I made the bread..... homemade bread using homemade ingredients....divine!!! I knew from previous experience that if I used my stand mixer to make whipped cream, then let the machine keep going, then I would eventually have butter. What I had forgotten was that I needed to strain it to separate the butter from the buttermilk. If you're interested in doing this yourself, here's what I did (sorry no pictures this time):
Tools needed:
Some people use a mixer, some people use a food processor, some people use a blender, and some people use a quart mason jar. It all depends on what you have available to you. Additional items: two bowls, a spatula, a wooden spoon, and cheesecloth (optional).
Ingredients:
Cream - I use raw cream but you can use store bought too. Just make sure that it's NOT ultra-pasteurized. The pasteurization process breaks down the fat globules too much and your butter may not turn out.
sea salt (optional)
I poured the cream into the bowl for my stand mixer and turned it on medium-high. I let the mixer whip the cream until it formed firm peaks, then let it go a little while longer (maybe another 15-30 seconds). Then I turned the speed down to medium and switched the wire whisk on my machine to the beater and continued on medium for about another couple of minutes. You should see the frothy cream start to spin a little in the bowl. Then, removing the bowl from the mixer, I pressed the mixture against the side of the bowl using my spatula. You'll see that the buttermilk leaks out of the butter. The goal is to get all of the buttermilk out of the butter or your butter will spoil too quickly. I put the clumps of butter that I pressed into a separate bowl and poured the buttermilk into a different bowl. When most of the butter was out, I strained the mixture through several layers of cheesecloth, squeezing to get out the buttermilk. SAVE THIS BUTTERMILK!!! You can use it just like store-bought!! Use it in pancakes, bread, whatever. After you've reserved the buttermilk, keep pressing the butter to get ALL of the buttermilk out. Then add in some ice cold water and press again, this time dumping out the water. This part is called washing the butter. You'll want to repeat this step until the wash water that presses out is clear. Once it's clear, then you can give it a final press and mix in your sea salt (although I leave mine unsalted). There you have it - Homemade butter!
This week I picked up another bottle of cream and thought that I might try to make some creamer. I can't drink my coffee without it! I know the store-bought stuff is bad but it just tastes so good! (Have you read the ingredients???) So I followed a recipe I got from this website for the honey-vanilla creamer and used my raw milk and cream. The only thing that I did differently was I didn't cook it. I didn't see the need and I didn't want to kill all the good bacteria in my raw cream.
Yea! Now tomorrow morning, I can have coffee with my homemade creamer while eating homemade toast with homemade butter and homemade jelly!! Maybe I'll even fry up some eggs that I'll be bringing in later tonight using lard that I made from our pig. Oh, what the heck, and some bacon from our pig too! :)
