Butter and Cheese Making

[mysticokra]

Is there a book that covers the entire process for making butter and cheese?

We need a "how-to" book that defines words like "clabber" and "churn" as well as mile-markers in the process. For example, if it's "supposed" to smell sour at some stage, make sure we know that. If you have to wait to put the salt in until a certain stage, tell us when.

We probably will start with Raw Cow's milk, but could work our way up to goat's milk as well.

Thanks for the help.

[Stoneheartfarm]

There are books available. Check in the back of a "Mother Earth Magazine". They usually have at least one book on cheese making listed. Butter isn't that hard, and while I've seen it explained in other books, I've never seen a book just on butter making.

Steve

[Pat]

Given that you don't have to salt butter, the process is pretty simple...

1. Clean the churn
2. Add whole milk
3. Churn it
4. remove the lumps (this is the butter)
5. Feed the depleted liquid to the hogs, cook with it, or drink it or whatever. It is LOW fat but contains some milk solids.

The butter may have a little liquid milk in it. Press the raw butter into a butter mold (preferably with a pretty picture (wood cut) in it to make the butter look nice. Much of the liquid will be pressed out of the butter doing this. Don't worry a little liquid won't really hurt.

No churn? Easy to make. As a test you can just shake up some milk in a wide mouth jar. Butter should form and the wide mouth makes it easier to get it out.

So if just shaking milk makes butter, how is it that cows can run and bounce their udders and not have it become butter?

Pat

[Bird]

</font><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr />
So if just shaking milk makes butter, how is it that cows can run and bounce their udders and not have it become butter?

[/ QUOTE ]

The milk's too fresh; got to age a day or two after it leaves the cow. [img]/forums/images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

While your instructions would certainly work, we did it just a little bit differently. We had quite a number of "crocks" when I was a kid, so when we finished milking, we brought the bucket of milk in the house and poured it through a clean dishtowel (made from a feed sack that mother had hemmed) into a clean crock (you started with a clean bucket and did your best to keep everything clean, but still strained the milk when we got in the house anyway which also got rid of the foam on top [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]). The crock then went into the refrigerator. The next day, with an ordinary coffee cup (some called a teacup), we skimmed off the cream that had risen to the top and put it into another crock and back in the refrigerator. What was left (and you alway missed a little bit of cream and of course got just a little bit of milk that wasn't cream) was the milk we used. When the "cream crock" got full, we poured it into the churn, put the lid on of course, and left it sitting out until it got to room temperature. Then we churned it. When we "removed the lumps" (the butter) as you said, from the top, we put it into a bowl of ice water, sprinkled a bit of salt on it (unnecessary as you mentioned), stirred it around a bit and formed it into a ball. That removed the rest of the liquid and firmed it just slightly. And then we pressed it into the butter mold.

In other words, we just used the cream instead of whole milk. I would assume (don't know for sure) that if you wanted to drink the buttermilk, whole milk would be preferable, but no one in my family cared for buttermilk, so after the butter was made, what remained went to the hogs and chickens.

[Stoneheartfarm]

Bird,

Your experience mirrors mine. The cream needs to be room temperature before you churn. We tried it with cream that was still at fridge temperature and it took an awful lot of churning to get butter. (Course, by that time the cream had warmed up. [img]/forums/images/icons/blush.gif[/img] )

Just in case anybody wants to try, you can use store bought cream. Just takes a smidge more churning. [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

Steve

[GaryM]

OK, maybe this is a dumb question, but if you shake the container of cream how come you get butter and not whipped cream? Is it the fact that you're shaking and not whipping? You don't shake enough to incoporate air?

[egon]

If'n I can remember correctly the fresh cows milk is put through a cream separator whick leaves you with cream and milk. The milk went to feed the calve and the cream was either sold or made into butter.

letting the fresh milk set in a cool environment let the cream rise to the top and the milk stayed on the bottom. we called this whole milk. A delight to drink compared to what is found in stores today.

The butter churns were no delight to operate. Took a lot of work.
Egon

[egon]

The time shaken and the butterfat content.

Egon

[Bird]

</font><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr />
how come you get butter and not whipped cream?

[/ QUOTE ]

For whipped cream, you're beating (or whipping) it at a much higher speed so you're mixing the entire contents of the container, and yes, incorporating some air. Shaking (or churning) it, you're separating the butter from the remainder of the contents.

Also, you whip cream when it's reasonably fresh and cold. For butter, warmed and even soured a bit.

And of course you can make butter from whole milk. When I started first grade in school, we carried our lunch and I carried a pint fruit jar of milk each day. There was no refrigeration (or air-conditioning of course) in the school. So one day in warm weather, when I went to eat my lunch, my milk had soured, so instead of pouring it out, that afternoon, walking home from school, I just shook that jar all the way home, and when I got home, I had a small pat of butter to take off the top. And my mother still likes to tell people about me doing that. [img]/forums/images/icons/laugh.gif[/img]

Another of her favorite stories is about us moving to Baltimore for about a year when I was still a baby. She said she was telling a neighbor (who'd lived in the big city all her life) about giving me fresh, still warm milk when she milked the cow, and the neighbor said, "You mean you gave that baby milk before they put the cream in it?!" [img]/forums/images/icons/laugh.gif[/img]

[Bird]

</font><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr />
cream separator

[/ QUOTE ]

Egon, we never had one of those, although I've operated an uncle's separator. When you used one of those machines, I guess you got just about all the cream (butter fat) and what was left we called "blue john"; thin, bluish white, considered unfit for human consumption and was fed to the calves, hogs, and/or chickens. Of course, they sell it now-a-days in the grocery store as "less than .5% butterfat" and I still have no use for it. [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

When you just let the cream rise naturally to the top and skimmed it off, you still had normal looking, and tasting, milk because you never really got all the butter fat out of it.

When I was a kid and ate breakfast cereal, I didn't use "milk", I used that cream that was so thick it made a bowl of cereal like a thick paste; could have eaten it with a fork. [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img] And I guess if you could even find cream that thick, and I did that now, I'd weigh 400 pounds. [img]/forums/images/icons/laugh.gif[/img]