Butter is great and has so many uses in cooking, but we also love to have it on our bread. But did you know it’s quite easy to make yourself?
If you do want to make it, all you need is a high fat content cream (whipping or double).
Then you’re just going to whip it up, as you would to make whipped cream.
It’s best if you a stand mixer to save your arms, otherwise a hand whisk is fine.
Or if your kids want to do this, then a fun way is to pour your cream into a sealable tub (Tupperware) and shake the tub until it thickens.
WHIP
Anyone who’s whipped cream before will know (or learn the hard way) that if you whip your cream too much it gets very stiff and then starts to split. This is because the fat molecules in the cream have been agitated so much they start to separate from the liquid (milk) part. – When making butter though, this is exactly what we want!
Keep whipping the cream until the fat fully separates from the cream and clumps together. (if you’re doing this in a tub, take the lid off and continue whipping/stirring with a fork). You should then be left with a pale milky liquid, which is butter milk, and lumps of fat, which is your butter.
Clump together your butter and transfer it to a very cold (ice if possible) bowl of water, then wash and squeeze the remaining butter milk from your butter.
And voilà, you have your butter, which you can roll in some parchment paper and place in the fridge. Unlike your cream the butter will keep for a lot longer.
This is particularly good if you have cream going off, removing the milk means its mostly fat and will keep for a good few months in your fridge.
Flavour
You can choose to flavour and or salt your butter to give it a better taste.
Salting is simple, before you shape and refrigerate your butter, sprinkle with some salt, mix and shape.
you can flavour butter with herbs and spices by simply adding them in to your butter, however it is much better to infuse the flavour into your butter.
To infuse, simply choose a pan with a lid, melt your butter gently then add your flavours (thyme, garlic, rosemary, coriander, onion….) Leave the pan on very low for a min of 20mins (You can leave for 2 hours or more for stronger flavour). Ideal temperature should be around 70-80oC (this starts to breakdown your additives better and release the flavour). Don’t boil or simmer as this can add bitter notes to your butter, especially if using fresh herbs.
Once you have flavoured, drain through a sieve into a bowl (or mould if you have one), leave to cool and solidify, then you can shape in some parchment paper and refrigerate if you wish.
Clarification
This isn’t checking you’ve read this right, this is to remove any impurities and dairy parts from your butter (homemade or shop bought).
You might notice when you melt your butter you get a few foamy parts on top and a few white solid parts on the bottom. This is your butter separating once more. The foamy parts are impurities and some dairy, which can be skimmed off with a spoon. the white parts at the bottom are the dairy solids. You can keep these in for flavour or you can gently pour your butter into a different pot and leave those behind.
WHY?…
This gives you clarified butter, or ghee (though usually you would cook the butter a little more to brown those solids parts, giving your butter a slightly nuttier flavour for ghee).
What makes clarified butter better? As well as a good addition in a lot of cooking, by removing the dairy solids in the butter, it raises the ‘smoke point’ [temperature you can heat the fat to before burning], this means you can use it to fry things in without it burning, but still getting the buttery flavour. This is especially great for frying steaks!
Give it a try, I always try to keep a pot of clarified butter in my fridge.
Anyone lover of butter is also a hater or cold butter, especially if you want to spread it on something (or bake a cake). So if you’re making your own butter and want to turn it spreadable, then why not try adding some oil. Your spreadable butter from the shop is pretty much just butter blended with an oil.
To do this you will need to soften your butter, then whip/beat in a vegetable oil of your choice. Roughly using half the amount of oil to butter ratio (ie 200g butter, 90g oil). The more oil you use the looser your mixture will be and wise versa. Rapeseed oil is a good choice for this, obv each oil will give a different taste.
You can experiment whipping other fats into your butter too to give different tastes and take your bread to a while new level.
Want to learn to make bread to go with your awesome butter? why not check out the bread course you can come and do with friends or by yourself. Or check out all the experiences from F.Oh.Oh.D
Photo by Sorin Gheorghita, Megumi Nachev, Dan Dennis, Joyful, Anja Junghans on Unsplash