Learning Objective
You will learn how to make cultured butter and buttermilk and find out about the role of probiotic bacteria.
I started making my own butter because I absolutely love real buttermilk. As I began to understand the role of probiotics in supporting the gut I started to inoculate my butter, with lactic acid bacteria. There is a lot of research to show how certain strains of lactic acid bacteria can be beneficial to the gut. This really appeals to me – the idea of creating a cultured butter that is going to support the gut as part of our 7 core principles really elevates the nourishment to the gut for the humblest of foods, but what is really important to understand is that you would need strain specific evidence to really be able to apply the research on specific health benefits.
I use the cream from my local farmer that is sold in our local greengrocers to turn into delicious homemade butter and buttermilk. I also love the fact that the dairy supplies our local shop directly, and I’ve been a customer of our local greengrocers since I was a little girl. It means that the farmer is paid a fair price for his milk. One of the things that is perhaps not well known in the UK is that over the last decade or so, milk prices have at times dropped so low that the cost of producing milk has been higher than the market was paying for it. No one wants to think about it…but whilst researching for my book ‘Food for Thought‘ in 2018 I uncovered the fact that suicide rates among dairy farmers are especially high. I found the way in which farmers are treated deeply disturbing especially learning that large corporates literally squeeze the price so low it is not economical to produce milk with cows outside in the fresh air and farmers can no longer make a living.
Making a delicious loaf of sourdough bread is about far more than just something that tastes good. It’s also a question of what we put on that bread and what it symbolises. For me it’s not just butter. It’s delicious cultured butter that not only benefits our gut health, but is made with milk from local cows, cared for by a farmer who plays cricket at the cricket club next to my parent’s farm. It’s about community, I guess.
Ingredients
- 2 litres fresh double cream
- 4 heaped tablespoons of a really good quality milk kefir, or live yoghurt
- 8g sea salt, optional
It’s very easy to make amazingly delicious cultured butter at home. You can make it directly with fresh cream, but I prefer to culture the cream overnight. There are several ways to do this.
If I use kefir grains some do have significant nutritional and health benefits. If you don’t maintain a milk kefir, you may be able to find really good milk kefir at the supermarket, or you can use a great quality natural yoghurt – one with a good helping of live lactic acid bacteria. Add a large, heaped tablespoon of either kefir grains or kefir milk, or live yoghurt to the cream, stir and cover the bowl with a damp cloth. Leave the cream overnight, and in the morning you will have a beautiful culture with a light yoghurt lactic tang.
Pour the cultured cream into a bowl. You can make the butter by hand, but be prepared for a serious workout – it will take the better part of an hour to whip the cream into butter. Alternatively, make the most of modern technology, and beat the cream using a stand mixer on a slow speed. This will be quicker, so take care to watch and listen as the cream is mixed. You need to stop the mixer at the moment when the butter splits away from the buttermilk. At this point you will have a rich, deep yellow butter wallowing in the buttermilk.
Drain the buttermilk off. I use old fashioned milk bottles to store it, and keep it in the fridge. This delicious homemade buttermilk is used here at the School in soups and in bakes such as Fermented Buttermilk & Blueberry Sourdough Cake. In the summer I use it to make a wonderfully refreshing drink – simply whizz it up with some strawberries and serve chilled. When made from cultured cream, the buttermilk is full of lactic acid bacteria and acts as a probiotic.
Carefully rinse the drained butter under icy cold water to wash away the last of the buttermilk, then make sure it is very well drained. If you are going to use the butter for baking, and there are plenty of recipes to choose from on the Club, you need to leave it unsalted. The butter can be shaped into small blocks and kept in the fridge, or frozen for later use. In fact, it freezes beautifully so, although 800g of butter might seem like a lot to make, it will keep well and can be taken out of the freezer in smaller portions as you need it.
The butter is fabulous served with a freshly baked sourdough loaf. I tend to salt the butter that I serve at the table with 1% sea salt –that would be 8g of salt for 800g of butter. I will often serve the butter in a dish alongside bread that is still just warm from the oven. Or I put a block of butter into a jam jar and top the jar up with a little bit of the buttermilk. Then we sit around the table, chatting while we tear chunks of bread from the loaf and drag them through both the butter and the buttermilk to eat.
It also makes some wonderful flavoured butters. I blend 200g of butter with 2 heaped tablespoons of fair trade icing sugar and 2 heaped tablespoons of cocoa powder to get chocolate butter. Or use a tablespoon of cinnamon in place of the cocoa powder for cinnamon butter, which is divine spread onto hot toast, especially on a winter’s day. I make a range of herb butters too, they are always useful to add to soups and pasta dishes. Take a small bunch of fresh herbs, maybe parsley, oregano or mint (actually, shredded mint leaves make a really good addition to the chocolate butter), chop them finely and mix into some softened butter. Then there’s the classic garlic butter. Just add a couple of cloves of garlic, crushed with some fine sea salt, and a little finely chopped rosemary. At Christmas I make a delicious orange butter, and of course there is the essential brandy butter too. So many uses and it is a probiotic.
I also have a Cultured Anchovy Butter recipe here on the Club.
Learning Outcome
You will understand the health benefits of consuming cultured butter and buttermilk.