high butterfat butter

[josiegirl]

hi guys so i am on a quest to figure out how the heck to make high butterfat butter, like 83% and up. when i have the time i do love making fancy things like croissants and what not. i used to always use just regular butter, cuz the other stuff is so expensive and they turned out fine but now that i have our wonderful cow id love to try to making laminated dough with the REAL deal. the thing is, i can't for the life of me find how its made and what the difference is in the process that makes it higher butterfat. the only thing i can find is a blog saying all homemade butter is higher butterfat and that US companies add water back into the butter to get it to 80%. 

can anyone shed some light on this for me? the other thing is that i think i saw rosalinds blog say that whipping cold cream makes it higher butterfat.

as a side note: one other definite obstacle to getting butter i could bake pastries with was that i had a lot of residual moisture in my butter no matter how much i squeezed so i knew if i tried to bake with it it would probably be a disaster. i FINALLY figured out how to get that moisture out tho and get a nice plasticy, waxy butter by shaping it in my hands (cold hands) with a slapping motion. it totally dried the butter out it was amazing!! i was lucky too i only figured it out cuz i had filled all my molds but wanted to shape the last of the butter into blocks. i did see a video of french buttermakers slapping their butter with paddles into the shape but didn't think that that would get the moisture out the way it did. i think i tried kneading it on the counter but that just made a mess. cold hands is the way to go! ive got the finished dough to make a 'rough puff' pastry danish in the fridge im very curious how itll turn out! if that turns out well its on to a fully laminated dough!

[simplynaturalfarm]

Cream separator. I will put 1/2 gallon thick cream in kitchenaid and get 1 cup liquid buttermilk tops and thick waxy butter that is ready to with.
Winter butter is also much easier

[josiegirl]

ooh nice! i have an antique one but we could never get it to stop leaking the cream out the bottom lol. i do freeze my cream tho and it typically has very little buttermilk leftover too cuz most of it already separates out and i skim it, so its like double skimmed lol.

thats interesting that winter butter is easier, i guess its the one thing thats easier in winter ha!

[simplynaturalfarm]

Frozen cream does not behave like separated cream. My separated cream is almost butter before processing it's so thick it has to be scraped from jars.

[treatlisa]

I don't think you will be disappointed in baking with your butter - even if it seems there is a little moisture left in it. Still way more butterfat than store bought.

I get the best/waxiest butter from taking the thickest cream from the top and not taking too much of the 'coffee cream' layer for butter. Usually I am collecting butter over a few days in a gallon jar so the first batch I make will be the thickest and best cream for waxy butter. As I continue through the gallon (one quart at a time) the lower levels will be lower in quality. Still great for most purposes, but the 1st batch is what I would use for laminating dough.

I would just start experimenting when you have time and see what happens. I haven't tried the fully laminated dough yet, but it is on my list of adventures for 'one day'.

I like to rinse/squeeze under cold running water with my cold hands.

[rosalind]

My frozen cream gets thick and gummy, too. I almost have to add some lighter cream to it!

Once I melted butter in a syringe and let the milk solids separate from the fat to measure the % butterfat. I don't know how at home one could get an exact number, but at least I got the idea I was in the ballpark range.

[Kelsey]

SNF posted this awesome video a while back. See how they work the butter until it's nice and plastic-y? That's the key to high butterfat % butter. How thick/high bf the starting cream is doesn't really matter; thicker cream is simply easier to churn.

If you are fairly decent at working butter, you'll be pleased with the result. If your butter is crumbly/granular and weeps a lot, it needs to be worked more. Not sure how important that is on the small scale but worth some reading.

Commercial cream goes through a tempering process after pasteurization (like chocolate) to produce the ideal crystaline structure for butter. This process also helps determine the bf %.

[Meadow Creek Mama]

Separator cream is really thick, too thick to pour, if you set it tight. Maybe that is what you're looking for.

[josiegirl]

its weird, sometimes the frozen cream is ridiculously thick and scoopable and sometimes its not as much. i am thinking it has to do with how long it is thawed before reskimming it for churning.

yes kelsey now that i 'get' the kneading the butter thing that video makes so much more sense, wish id seen it before! there's another video about frnch buttermaking that i saw htat wasn't as in depth that showed the same thing. mine used to 'weep' and was prety granular, i think i can now make well kneaded, dry butter. i only make butter every couple weeks i cant wait to make it again and test. although i find it imposible to knead a big chunk i think doing the 4 oz chunk with my heands instead of on the counter i think thats why i didnt understand how you kneaded it, mine just stuck. i love butter!!

by the way, the pastry turned out meh. but it wasn't the butters fault, i was doing a 'rough puff' and my food processor blitzed the butter into butter powder instead of just grating it lol. gonna thaw some butter for fully laminated dough next.

[simplynaturalfarm]

I don't know why my cream separated stuff simply works so much better except there is so much less liquid to work out.
This is it before we work it and it was in kitchenaid for about 2 minutes to turn into butter before we use 1/4 cup scoop. After we divide it, we work it in small amounts but I didn't take that picture lol. Definitely not as picturesque as the video!
That's half the butter I make every 1-2 days . . .I think I'm a butter hoarder .... People definitely are horrified when I tell them how much butter we eat a week lol
.

[daisyhill]

I was just wondering the other day if it was just a little odd to think that it is necessary to have forty odd pounds of butter available at any given time...

Did I mention that I love butter?

On the butterfat question, I read somewhere that legally butter must be 84% to be sold as butter in the USA, and that the "water mixed in to lower the butterfat" was a myth. But since I can't remember where I read that, I'm not sure that is true either!

[josiegirl]

HAHAHAHAHA!!! well i can see im on the right forum. i am a butter hoarder too!! although because we were getting 2 gallons a day, we weren't getting as much cream as i would've liked. now that we've weaned all bets are off! my husband keeps trying to give away me butter to neighbors and im like nooooo!! haha it does make a lovely present tho! especially around here where most older people have fond memories of homemade dairy products.

beautiful butter simplynaturalfarm!! that is a massive amount to make every couple days hahaha im jealous, how many cows do you milk? i think someone on this forum should do a super in depth video of every step to making homemade butter. almost all the videos of buttermaking i see online don't really have much to say about kneading and shaping and getting that residual moisture out. i saw one study say some homemade butter can have as low as 65% butterfat, and i can see why in most of the reipes i see. one of you pros need to make a video!!

also just curious, how difficult is your cream separator to clean? my antique one has many parts to clean.

[rosalind]

I watched several buttermaking videos on YouTube and you're right - we need someone to do a really good one! LOL

Anyway, I thought you might enjoy this snippet from The Principles and Practices of Buttermaking (I LOVE this book! )

[simplynaturalfarm]

It would be a very short video lol.
Us butter minimum 80. Eu is 82-85 but makes a big difference.
My 9 year old washes cream separator so while I'd like to say it's complicated but I have a genius daughter, it isn't lol. I'll take a picture of the parts we wash .
I save up 1-2 days off milk and then cream separate. Right now I save milk for one day, then cream separate second.
I was separating 15 gallons from 2 cows in may, but I've gone to oad milking and with pasture gone, I'm down to half that.

My thick cream should have issues with too much moisture according to that book, but it's so thick it is requires little work to churn which must compensate.

I can't figure out how to some butters in store are Soo nasty. Forgive me those of you who use aldi butter, but it's like margarine, greasy with no flavor - worst butter I've ever bought! I keep store bought salted butter for company (great value from Walmart or Sam's) but none of us like it at all. But if we are visiting people we never complain and eat everything served cheerfully! ( We are not simply food snobs lol)

Homemade butter is so divine!!! The butter in picture I showed is almost done - very little came back out.

[simplynaturalfarm]

When I cleaned out my freezers this spring, I found 70 lbs butter I had forgotten lol! I had been rationing everybody till cows freshened ( my cows are dry at same time) and i wondered how could I have lost 70 lbs ...
That doesn't include the 20 quarts of ghee I have in pantry!

[josiegirl]

yes ive heard you talk about that book rosalind, i am adding it to my list of books to get!! i think itd be so much fun to have a 'workshop' or something to teach people how to make butter. once i master it of course!

ooooh you have a 9 year old i am soooo jealous!! i cant WAIT til my daugher is old enough to do dishes, i think hands down the washing up is the absolute worst part of having a cow lol. and im not usually one to complain about doing dishes either, i spent a long time livin in the woods with no running water except cold creeks so doing dishes with hot running water is almost bliss. the darn milker just fits in my sink really awkward and makes it a pain.

you know whats funny? i cant even really tell the difference between homemade butter and store bought, im so unsophisticated haha! although to be fair my butter was not so great for a while, and i havent had store boughtin months now i would like to make a side by side comparison now that im getting the hang of making decent butter and see if i can tell now. my friends and neighbors all rave about it and i dont even notice haha! simplynatural why do you keep storebought for visitors? are they scared that its raw?

[josiegirl]

i saw this blog post on king arthur flours baking site about AA butter verse european butter. they seem to prefer AA surprisingly. they said you cant always swap AA for european style for things like cookies, which is funny cuz for halloween i made sugar cookies to decorate all spooky but they ended up more like butter cookies. they were absolutely delicious and im gonna be sending some out for christmas for sure but i wa surprised at how the butter made such a difference. just thought that was interesting

www.kingarthurbaking.com/blog/2016/08/18/butter-baking

[Kelsey]

Interesting!!
Unless you're doing an official lab test (butter into beaker, incinerate with blow torch to burn off all water and solids, leaving only ash and fat, weigh) it will be impossible to know what % you have. But I think if you work/knead it really well and it's not weeping a lot of moisture, it should be great for all your baking needs. I wouldn't worry about too high of butterfat!

[rosalind]

Fun article!

My baked goods do seem to weep a bit of butter, so I'm thinking I should probably try their advice of using 3/4 of the recipe amount.

[josiegirl]

yeah id like to make 2 batches of those cookies to see if the one with less butter is more sugar cookie-ish. i DO love butter cookies tho. what a happy accident lol. theyll make great gifts.

ill send a package of goodies to anyone who makes an awesome in depth buttermaking video HAHA!!