Cultured Butter

Yes, I've been stuck on a milk theme. But why not? There's so much you can do with milk. Besides, where there's milk, there's cream. And where there's cream, there could be butter.

I've been hearing a lot about cultured butter lately. It just keeps coming up--on websites, in conversation (the conversations I have, anyhow), in magazines--so I thought I would see what it was all about. I followed the directions given on The Traveler's Lunchbox, where you can also find a good description of what exactly cultured butter is and why. Basically, it is butter made from cream that has been cultured--introduced with bacteria and allowed to ferment overnight. Basically, it is delicious.

To make butter, one needs cream. I first asked my milk man if I could get cream from him. He sort of hemmed and hawed, so I took that as a no. A few days later I was at a talk where samples of local raw milk were on offer, so I asked one of the sample-givers if she knew of a source of raw cream. She gave me a name, told me her number was in the book, and suggested I give her a call. Her number is in the book and I did give her a call. I explained how I got her name and asked if it was indeed true that I could buy cream from her. "Oh, yeah, sure, help yourself, it's on the bottom shelf in the fridge. The very bottom. The cream for sale is on the bottom shelf," she said. Right. It's in the fridge. On the bottom shelf. But where is the fridge? "Oh, well, you go down --- Rd. a couple miles and y'know where --- used to be, well, that's on the left and what used to be --- that's on the left a little ways down and just past that there's a dirt road on the right. We're down that road. You can see the farm from the road. We're just down that dirt road, yeah, just past the bend." On the dirt road. Just past the bend. I've only lived here for a year, so what used to be such-and-such doesn't really mean much to me, but I didn't like to press her for better directions. By the end of the phone call I knew that there was raw cream on the bottom shelf of a fridge down a dirt road just past a bend for $2.50 per quart. And to please return the jar when I was done. I was just glad to have found a source of cream.

Now I just had to find the fridge. I called the farm on Monday and on Thursday I took her directions and my camera and set out to find it. I found the dirt road and its bend surprisingly easily, considering the cryptic nature of the directions and the fact that both of the landmarks I was looking for didn't exist anymore. The only problem was that I still didn't know exactly where the fridge was. When I drove up I saw a house on the right and a barn and a shed on the left. There were two cars parked outside the house so I thought I would ring the bell and ask. I rang the bell twice, but nobody answered, so it was up to me to find the fridge alone. I still wasn't exactly sure I was in the right place, but thought I would look around anyway and see what I could see. The shed seemed like a promising place to start. As I walked up to it I could see there was a note in the window of the door. It was an apology for the low supply of eggs that week. If they sold eggs, it seemed likely they sold cream and that I was in the right place after all. I tried the door, it opened, and lo, there was The Fridge.

As promised there was one jar of cream on the bottom shelf. I left $2.50 in the lock box in the door of the fridge and took my cream.

It felt as if my adventure was over, having procured the cream, but I still had butter to make. When I got home I put the quart of cream in my yoghurt making jar and added 1/3 of a cup of yoghurt. I set the jar on the counter and left it there overnight. The next morning the cream was definitely thicker. Before whipping it, I had to cool the cream, so I put it in an ice bath in the sink. Then, using my KitchenAid, I started whipping the cream. It was a beautiful thing to watch. I don't think I've seen cream so thick before and it didn't take much to get to stiff peaks. I could tell that it was about to break, so I lowered the speed. I'm a huge fan of gently whipped cream on pie, so it was hard to watch a bowl-full of gorgeous cream break, but to make butter you've gotta break some cream. At this point I had butter clumps swimming in buttermilk. I drained off the buttermilk as best I could and prepared to rinse the butter. It is a strange feeling pouring ice-water into not quite formed butter, but that is what was called for. I poured in the ice-water and kneaded the butter with a wooden spatula. I repeated the rinsing several times until the water ran clean. I kept kneading to get as much water out of the butter as possible and then declared it done.

Homemade cultured butter. It is delicious. It was worth the phone call, the drive, the pain of watching beautiful cream break, the awkwardness of the rinsing. I bought some cultured butter to see how mine held up to that of the professionals and I honestly think mine was a bit better. It could be that I wanted it to taste better; that I wanted my cream caper to be an unequivocal success, but I really do think my butter was richer, somehow, and bit tangier.

I have since convinced my milk man to let me buy cream from him, so hopefully I'll be making and eating my own butter indefinitely. And if push comes to it, I know where the fridge is.

Yoghurt

I've been getting milk from the farm for eight months. I've been making yoghurt from it for about seven and a half. When I started getting raw milk I was still buying yoghurt at the store. It soon dawned on me that I could make my own yoghurt. My thinking was that such delicious milk must be able to be transformed into delicious yoghurt. It turns out I was right, although it took me a little while to get consistently good results.

The first time I tried to make yoghurt I didn't have a thermometer, an incubator, or any experience. I had the thought, though, that it could be done. So it was that I heated a half-gallon of milk until it was warm to the touch, stirred in some store-bought yoghurt with active cultures, poured the mixture into canning jars and left them in the the half-bathroom with an electric heater overnight. The results were not spectacular. I ended up with slightly thick-ish sour milk. Surprisingly, I wasn't discouraged.

The next day I ordered myself a Yogourmet Multi II yoghurt maker. I think "maker" is a bit of an overstatement, though. I prefer to think of it as an incubator. In any case, it is a great little machine that keeps my milk and bacteria at the optimal temperature for turning milk into yoghurt. I also got myself a thermometer.

Seven months later, I have my process down.

First a note about starters. I used to order the Yogourmet starter culture, but find that using half a cup of store-bought yoghurt that has active cultures works just as well. It also allows you to somewhat control the texture of your yoghurt. I find that the finished product mimics the texture of the starter yoghurt. I use Butterworks whole milk yoghurt because it's local to Vermont. It also has a silky texture and a nice tang that translate well into the finished product. I can also recommend Seven Stars whole milk yoghurt, for all you Pennsylvanians. I tried using some of my own yoghurt as a starter, but found that it didn't work very well. The resulting yoghurt was grainier than I like, although the flavor was still good. I'm not sure why, but my thought is that the other bacteria in the raw milk took over, overpowering the 'intentional' bacteria from the store-bought yoghurt.

I start by putting a half-cup of the starter yoghurt into a Pyrex measuring pitcher. Knowing the jar in which I incubate my yoghurt doesn't fit quite a half-gallon of milk, before I heat the milk I decant some of it into this little crystal pitcher that came from my grandmother's house. (It holds the exact amount that doesn't fit in the jar.) I then heat the milk, stirring it constantly, until it reaches 110 degrees Fahrenheit. To keep the bacteria from getting too much of a fright, I ladle some of the hot milk into the starter yoghurt and stir it up, making sure there are no lumps. I then add the mixture to the pot and stir it in. I pour the milk into the jar, pop it into the Yogourmet, which I have filled to the line with warm water, plug her in, and wait at least eight hours. The whole process, including dishes takes less than ten minutes.

On the other end of the eight or so hours (it doesn't really seem to matter how long you leave it, whithin reason), I strain my yoghurt to make it a bit thicker. I put two pieces of cheesecloth in a colander and the colander in a bowl. I pour the warm yoghurt into the colander and let it sit until it reaches the desired thickness. If I want a runnier yoghurt I leave it for between 40 minutes and an hour, if I want it thicker I leave it longer. Reaching the thickness of Greek yoghurt takes quite a while, a couple hours or so. At this point the yoghurt is kind of lumpy so I tend to whisk it until it is smooth. Once smooth, I pour or ladle it into a quart jar and refrigerate it before using it for anything. I don't know how long it keeps because it's always gone within three days.

What I like about making yoghurt is that it takes almost none of your time and the result is amazing. I find my yoghurt to be far tastier than any store-bought yoghurt I've tried. It's just so rewarding to transform good milk into perfect yoghurt. Making yoghurt has become a routine for me--it's no longer a hassle, just a normal part of every-other day.

Know Your Cows

I am fortunate enough to live in an area of Vermont where there are several farms willing to sell raw milk in easy driving distance of my house. I have been availing myself of one such source for the past eight months or so, and cannot imagine getting my milk anywhere else.

Phil's (organic, pastured) herd is a mix of Jerseys and Holsteins. He knows all his cows by name and this morning, at my request, he introduced me to them. Among them are Nora and Emma, Emily, Courtney, Caddy, and Nelly. There's April who he bought from an old man and who is shy of children and strangers. There's Blacky who is a mix of Jersey and Holstein. There's Saltine whose dad's name was Cracker. There is something so reassuring about knowing the names of the cows whose milk you're drinking.

I go out to the farm at least once a week to get milk. Iload up my M. Feller Son & Daughter bag with my empty bottles and take the six-mile drive into the Vermont countryside. In the milk shed I follow the same routine every time. I find a mug (there are usually several in the sink), fill it with water and set it aside. I take the plastic pitcher off its hook and set out my bottles. Then I take the stopper off the zillion-gallon stainless steel tank and pour myself the creamiest, sweetest milk I have ever tasted. Once my bottles are full I rinse the spout with the water I set aside, re-stopper the tank, and clean and hang up the pitcher. I leave my money in the odd-n-ends box and thank Phil if he's around and the cows if they're in the shed.

I leave the milk shed with a sense of well-being. I know exactly where my milk comes from. The tank room is separated from the milking shed by only a swinging door. My milk travels a matter of yards from cow to bottle. And I can see for myself the condition of the shed, the cows, everything. As far as I can tell the cows are happy, the shed is clean, and the milk is pure.

I started buying milk from the farm for several reasons. I have been redoubling my efforts to 'buy local' and buying straight from the cow seemed about as local as I could get. I had a feeling that its flavor would be beyond compare. I had also been told by my doctor that drinking raw milk is far better for you than drinking pasteurized milk (he told me to avoid ultra-pasteurized milk at all costs).

In writing this post I consulted several books including the Oxford Companion to Food, The Cambridge World History of Food, and Sally Fallon's Nourishing Traditions. All of my reading suggests that milk, at first glance the very picture of innocence, is the source of much controversy. There is the question of pasteurization--is it necessary anymore? is it actually harmful? There is the problem of digestion--a large percentage of adults can't digest milk. There are the good bacteria, but also sometimes the bad. However, it also seems unanimous that, as it is put in The Cambridge World History of Food, "Milk remains a singularly, almost uniquely, nutritious foodstuff, invested with elementally significant cultural and nutritional value."(700)