Earlier I posted on my initial success of making butter, and since it was a little too easy, I decided to bump up the standard a bit in order for me to cross it off my ten cooking goals for 2010. Instead of just making butter, I decided to make my own bread too and learn how to use a butter mold — all for a holiday meal.
So what did I do? First of all, for pre-Christmas Eve I made two loaves of homemade olive bread. I mostly used my go-to Jamie Oliver recipe, but this time I adapted it with another one specifically for olive bread. I also used my vintage butter mold that I bought off of eBay. It worked well and was a nice touch. I just soaked the wooden mold/press in ice water for 30 minutes, used a spatula to press the soft, room-temperature butter into the mold, and then I covered the bottom with cellophane wrap and chilled it until hardened. Out came a nice fancy butter round with a design on top.
As for the butter, I am still trying to perfect it but the results are so good that I will definitely be buying less supermarket butter. My first try at butter was quick, easy, and the tastiest of all three attempts so far. The cream I had used had soured in the fridge (not at room temperature) and the container had been opened allowing some of the milky liquid to evaporate. The cream came out clumpy, smelled rather sour, and was harder to churn but the result was the best.
For my second attempt, I had opened the carton to let air in for about 10 days and used the heavy cream right at the expiration date. I also let it sit out on the counter for 8 hours to culture at room temperature. This made a nice creamy butter that tasted great on the olive bread, but it just didn’t have the tang of that first one. I could tell when I smelled it that it wasn’t quite sour enough.
On New Year’s Eve, I used another carton of cream that I had also opened and let sit in the fridge. It was about six days past its expiration date, and I didn’t let it sit on the counter as I couldn’t wait several hours for the butter. The cream was much clumpier and just starting to sour. This batch was in the middle of the pack in terms of taste, but it still didn’t have the tang I was looking for.
So what have I learned? Well, first of all sour, cultured cream is best for butter, and now my fridge has a cream culturing experiment going on it. I have about 2-3 cartons of cream aging in the fridge awaiting the butter-making process as I count the days until they go sour. I am also not buying ultra-pasteurized cream hoping that the less pasteurized product will speed up the culturing process. I am also going to store the milk in different containers. I am no food scientist, but I suspect that more air will enhance the culturing, just as a decanter helps wine. If you just open a carton, there is very little surface area for evaporation to take place and not much room inside to let the natural souring process happen. I think my next attempt will involve culturing the cream past the expiration date in the fridge in a different container, then letting it sit out for 12+ hours on the countertop. We’ll see what happens.
So the butter making continues even though I accomplished my cooking goal. Now I am locked in a stranger battle of trying to make cream turn sour just the way I like it. Of course, there are easier ways to culture cream/butter by using yogurt and letting it sit out longer, but for some reason I want to replicate that elusive first batch. There was just something inspiring about taking some cream I was ready to throw out and in five minutes making the best butter I have ever had.
