In December we tried a new restaurant that had recently opened in the neighborhood named Stella Barra, a pizzeria operated by the Lettuce Entertain You group. We ordered a red pizza (pepperoni) and a white (shaved fennel) along with some appetizers, salad and dessert. One of the appetizers we ordered was their house made bread, which came with a nice herb and roasted garlic dipping oil and for a small additional upcharge a ramekin of house churned butter. I'm a big fan of good butter, and this was excellent. Later, when discussing the meal on a local food based message board, I mentioned the house churned butter and another poster wondered what they did with the whey churning would produce. Another posted suggested they might use it as part of their crust recipe or for the bread. This intrigued me, so I decided to make some homemade butter myself and try it out.
After reading through several articles on butter making on the web, I came up with a plan. I had a few pints of whipping cream in the fridge that I had bought at Dominicks for 75% off when they were trying to sell off everything before closing the stores. If I had the patience to wait I would have ordered a buttermilk culture online so I could make cultured butter, instead I mixed some buttermilk directly in to the cream to add a bit of tang. The mix was covered and left out overnight to both warm up to room temperature and allow any bacteria that might be present to add a little flavor.
As per several of the web sites I had read, I first chilled the cream/buttermilk mixture down to 60 degrees fahrenheit. This is supposed to produce the best results. I put the cream mixture in the bowl of my trusty Kitchenaid stand mixer fitted with the paddle and turned it on low. Everything was fine until the speed was ramped up, then drops of cream began spraying shooting out of the bowl. The paddle was replaced with the whip and we moved on.
Because I had thinned the cream with buttermilk it took quite a while for the mix to whip up to the point it formed peaks, about 30 minutes. This was the point where I switched back to the paddle and let the machine run at the second speed setting. Things started to move quickly at this point. First the whipped cream started to look grainy, then you could clearly see the butterfat separating from the whey and forming large clumps. Because the cream had been cool at the start it was easy to press the butter to the side of the bowl and drain off why through a sieve, this was set aside to be used in making bread.
Now came the fun part, cleaning the butter of any remaining whey. To do this, the butter was placed in a small steel bowl and some cold, filtered water was added. Using a spoon, the butter was kneaded against the side of the bowl until the water had become cloudy at which point it was discarded and replaced with fresh. This was repeated until kneading the butter no longer made the water cloudy (about 5 times in this case). The next step drain the water and continue to knead to butter to get out as much remaining water as possible and finally to knead in a little Himalayan salt for preservation and flavor.
The end result was a little under a pound of butter from two pints of heavy cream and about a half cup of buttermilk. It isn't as tangy as I would like but far superior to the sticks of butter you get at the supermarket. Articles I've read indicate that using cream that hasn't been ultra-pasteurized will give better yield, next time I'll source out better cream and have some buttermilk culture on hand. Unless you can find cream on sale the resulting butter will probably end up costing more than just buying it at the supermarket, but it will be far superior.
Now to weigh in on the whey. I substituted whey in place of the regular water in my standard bread recipe. The formula is:
AP flour 40% 200 grams
Whey 60% 330 grams
Honey 2% 10 grams
Yeast (IDY) 1% 5 grams
Bread flour 60% 300 grams
Salt 2% 10 grams
EVOO 2% 10 grams
The AP flour, whey, honey and yeast are mixed together and allowed to ferment until bubbly. Next the bread flour and salt are added and mixed using the bread hook for about 2 minutes, then the oil is added and kneading continues until a smooth dough is formed. The dough is allowed to ferment until doubled, about 2 hours, then folded down and given another 30 minutes to an hour to rise. To form the loaf the dough is flattened out in to a rectangle about 18' long, then the ends are folded to the center, sprinkled with a little water and rolled up from the long side to form a log. The probe from a remote thermometer is pushed in the end and the load is covered and allowed to rise for about 45 minutes. The bread is baked in a 375 degree oven until the internal temp reaches 200 degrees. The loaf is allowed to cool at least 20 minutes before the thermometer probe is removed.
The resulting load has an extremely fine, soft crumb and great flavor! I'm not sure how it would do in a pizza crust, but the addition of whey is a definite improvement in a load of bread. Next time I'm going to try a longer cold ferment to increase the yeast flavor.
