Bread ‘N Butter

Last week I ran across this very easy recipe for making butter and thought the kids would like it.  I asked Wesley what he thought and he was all for it.  Of course, what goes better with homemade butter than homemade bread?  Nothing, that’s what.  So we made bread, too.

This morning Jillian and I made the bread.  We used our typical recipe to make a couple of loaves of white sandwich bread.  The recipe is easy and really tasty (as you might expect at 1/4 cup of butter per loaf).

Jillian adding the butter (not the homemade stuff)

Once the bread was all mixed and kneaded Wesley and I got to work on the butter.  We ended up using heavy whipping cream that had been ultra-pasteurized.  Apparently there is a bit of variance about what exactly is called heavy cream vs. heavy whipping cream. What it really comes down to is that you want the highest percentage of fat you can find with as little pasteurization as possible.  The more it is pasteurized (ultra) the longer you have to mix it and the less buttermilk you will have. Even still ours worked just fine.

Wesley adds 2 cups of heavy whipping cream and 1/2 tsp salt.

Wesley was in charge of the mixer.  He really liked running it and made less mess than he could have, but still splattered a bit of cream around.

Fun, but a little loud (and messy)!

The cream when we first started mixing.

Aerial view of mixing in action.

After maybe five minutes or so the cream started getting thick and foamy (like you’d expect from whipping cream) and then started to break down into chunky pieces and a thin white liquid separated out. The liquid is the butter milk, which had we wanted to we could have saved.

The butter and buttermilk separating.

Once the buttermilk separates out you get to have some real fun.  At this point we squished the butter together with our hands into a ball.  Then put the whole bowl, butter included into the sink and ran cold water into it.  We kept squishing the butter together and letting the buttermilk get washed away.  Unfortunately our tap water (being summer in Texas) was kind of warm and the butter was a little soft.  We added some ice cubes which seemed to help.

Squishing the butter together and rinsing off the buttermilk.

Super buttery fingers and hands and arms and shirts and ...

When we were done we’d turned the two cups of cream into about a half cup of very soft butter.  We put it in the fridge to harden and wait for the bread to be done.

Our finished product.

A few hours later the bread came out of oven and had cooled enough to be cut.  It was still warm and steamy and the butter was icy cold.

Our homemade bread topped with our homemade butter (and some store bought pears).

And how was it?  Delicious.

Worth the effort!

Our homemade butter won’t last as long as store bought before it spoils.  Of course I doubt it will last long enough to get the chance.

 

Tags: Food, Jillian, Wesley