Cultured Butter

There is nothing nicer to go with a chewy piece of homemade bread than some rich flavorful butter.  After making it a couple times I've come to the conclusion that homemade butter has a more pleasing texture and is considerably better tasting than what you get at the store.

I've found that making my own cultured butter is as easy as (if not easier than) making my own bread.  I use 1 quart of pasteurized (not ultra) Heavy Whipping Cream and a bit of plain yogurt with live cultures along with my blender to make it.  This gives me 2-3 small containers of butter which keep well in the freezer for the several months it takes us to consume them all.

I haven't felt adventurous enough to try salting or flavoring the butter.  Will maybe try that next time.

Ingredients:

• 1 qt Heavy Whipping Cream
• 2 spoonful of Plain Cultured Greek Yogurt (including L. Bulgaricus, L. Acidophilus, and L. Casei)

Process/Notes:

• 5/12/17:
• Put containers of cold cream and yogurt into a warm water bath in the sink for 30 min.  They warmed up to the high 70s
• Poured the cream into the blender
• Scooped in two large spoons of yogurt into the blender and stirred a bit to mix it in
• Left on the counter over night
• 5/13/17:
• After about 18 hrs some solids had started to form on the top of the cream

• Moved the blender to the fridge to cool down the cream prior to blending - chilled the cream for about 2 hrs
• Put a large bowl filled with cold water into the freezer in preparation to wash the butter
• Mixed the butter in the blender on low.  Took about 10 min for the butter to separate out

Mixing the cream

Texture immediately before separating

Butter separation complete

• Drained off the buttermilk

• Rinsed the butter with cold water several times until it ran clear.  Kneaded the butter during this process

Water starting to clear - did a coupe more rinses after this

• Kneaded a bit more to drain off excess liquid
• Put in Pyrex containers and then smoothed out with a knife for a better presentation

• Got three small containers - put two in the freezer for use later
• Enjoyed some delicious creamy butter with a fresh loaf of bread!
• 7/30/17 - Made up another batch of butter.  This time I decided to mix some things in:
1. Mixed in 1/4 tsp of garlic salt and 1 tsp of dried rosemary (this is per 1 cup of butter).  I'm going to let the flavors meld in this one.  Right now the garlic salt is a pretty strong flavor component.
2. Mixed in 2 tsp of honey.  This made for a pretty sweet butter.