Buttermilk plant

[wildflower]

Hi everyone, well, St. Patrick's Day is coming up, and I've been looking at soda bread recipes. I came across this interesting way the Irish used to make "buttermilk plant."

I hadn't heard of this before. I knew of two types of buttermilk, the cultured kind and the kind that comes from churning. Buttermilk plant involves keeping a starter going with yeast.

The instructions are here:

http://www.europeancuisines.com/Ireland-Irish-Buttermilk-Plant-Substitute

Anyone tried it?

[housewolf]

1. Interesting

I've never heard of this before. I'm a small consumer of buttermilk but for someone who uses a lot, it might be an interesting experiment. Personally though, from my perspetive, if you have to go to the store every 5 days to procure a quart of skim milk you might as well buy yourself some buttermilk and save all the work of cleaning the container, scalding, etc. Actually, a pint of buttermilk lasts me for several weeks so I just don't go through enough to go to the effort of making this. All that aside, I can see where this would be an interesting project for someone to experiment with. I'll be interested in reading about your results if you decide to try it!

[wildflower]

2. I've been making my own by adding milk to existing buttermilk

and leaving it on the counter 24 hours. It's so easy, but I wonder why we can't make yogurt this way?

I've just gotten into discovering all the benefits of buttermilk and trying it in all sorts of recipes.

But maybe someday I'll try this buttermilk plant. I don't fully understand why the yeast is required though.

[housewolf]

4. Not sure about the use of yeast as a the culture starter

It maya be that

If you do a search on "buttermilk culture" or "buttermilk culture starter", there are many methods of culturing and propagating buttermilk. Some use a specific buttermilk culture that you can buy, similar to yogurt culture, while others just use some regular dairy buttermilk. I don't know for sure... 'cause I've never done this... but from my experience with other starters, I'd expect a taste difference based on the specific bacteria that are desired, and to some extent that might be dependent upon the ambient temperature used during the inculturation. There seem to be several different bacteria used in the various culture products. Most say that you can continue culturing fresh buttermilk on an ongoing basis without going through the "buttermilk plant" process of straining and using the granules, but simply by adding milk and setting it out for some period of time.

It's similar to yogurt-making but with different bacteria - the yogurt bacteria need a higher temperature to work their magic, which also makes the mixture thicker. I read that you can make sour cream by adding some buttermilk to cream, too, and letting it sit out in a warm place.

I find all this so fascinating! I'd love to play around with this stuff if I thought I could use it in larger quantities...

[wildflower]

5. I was going to try the sour cream next

I do notice that when I make the buttermilk by leaving it on the counter, it thickens quite a bit. Maybe I should try doing yogurt this way just to see what happens. With a small amount of milk so I don't waste it.

I've been finding all kinds of uses for the homemade buttermilk. Breads, muffins, biscuits, pancakes, potatoes, cakes, and it's a great sour cream substitute too in cooking.

Another great thing is that using buttermilk instead of milk means I can just use baking soda instead of baking powder. This is especially helpful when making gluten-free things for folks, because you don't have to get the special gluten-free baking powder.

I also heard that you improve the digestibility of grains when you soak them in buttermilk, but I haven't tried that yet.

I've heard some people drink it (and have done so for ages) since it's more digestible than milk, but I am not there yet. :)

I think it's fascinating too! It's fun to find new things to try it in. I wonder how it would be as a more disgestible evaporated milk substitute in things like pumpkin pie?

[housewolf]

6. My dad used to drink buttermilk

Gotta admit, it surprised me the first time I saw him do it. I've never tried drinking it either, though.

You can make yogurt with a start from plain, unsweetened yogurt that you can buy at the store. There's a process of scalding the milk and letting it cool then adding the culture. Then it needs to sit at about 100 degrees for 6 hours or so. At lower temps it develops a tang but doesn't really thicken up. About a year ago I entered a post here asking for folks' recipes for making homemade yogurt - you could probably find it doing a search for "homemade yogurt". I tried several methods and found Hippywife's method to work out best for me - putting it in a cooler with a heating pad to keep the temperature up. The method of leaving it in a turned-off crock pot wrapped in towels didn't work at all for me - it didn't really thicken at all. I also tried putting it in the microwave with a bowls/cups of hot water (that I kept changing as the water cooled - to keep the temp up in the microwave - an no, I never turned the mw on) worked better than the crock pot - it thicked somewhat but not a that much and when stirred, it was kinda clumpy. For nice thickening and smoothness, the cooler with heating pad worked the best - actually I have a pretty big cooler so I needed to use cups of warm water in there too, to keep the temp at about 100 degrees.

I've heard about digestibility re: kefir & yogurt, but I hadn't heard that about buttermilk. In my kitchen it's basically a baking ingredient. Love buttermilk biscuits (forget cream biscuits, not flavorful enough). Waffles with buttermilk - frequently. I used to have a bread-baking online friend who's daily bread was buttermilk bread - I baked it a few times and it was truly delicious. Buttermilk's teriffic for baking!

I don't have a clue as to how it would work as an evap milk substitute!

I'm fascinated by the transformative process of starters - how bacteria changes something into something else. It's so intriguing to me. If I was a drinker, I'm sure I'd be nuts about the natural brewing process...

[wildflower]

7. I think I posted to that thread about using a thermos to make yogurt

I still do that sometimes.

I'm into starters right now too. Another that intrigues me is making a "vinegar mother":

http://www.learnalittle.com/food/vinegar-mother.htm

[housewolf]

8. Vinegar starters - just be careful if you have a sourdough starter

i've never worked with vinegar but I knew someone who did, and it ruined all her sourdough starters. I don't how or what she was doing - not sure if she had the sourdough starters out whilel making vinegar or if just having both going on in the same kitchen even at different times caused her problems. So be sure to keep a backup of your sourdough starter(s), and do your best to not infect them.

[Warpy]

3. My problem with buttermilk is that I'd use part for soda bread

or muffins and do a buttermilk dressing with part and end up with at least a third of a bottle getting chunky in the fridge. They only sell it in quarts here, alas.

I discovered the wonderful alternative of dried buttermilk about 15 years ago and now rarely buy it in the bottle.

The recipe in the OP looks suspiciously like kefir made with kefir grains, the same as the buttermilk "plant," although likely of different organisms. Kefir is a wonderful thing for those of us who are lactose intolerant and don't want to fuss making homemade yogurt. It works right out on the countertop in a wide range of ambient temperature. I never bothered scouring anything, just dumped the grains into the quart of goat's milk (or cow, my local mini farm had goats). Once it had turned into kefir, it was ready to mix with fruit and honey for the best smoothies I've ever had in my life. Kefir cheese is like yogurt cheese, although a little less tangy and more of a low cal substitute for cream cheese.

If I live anyplace that doesn't have dried buttermilk, I'll certainly consider the OP's recipe. Or not, lemon juice or vinegar added to milk accomplishes the same thing for most recipes except salad dressings.

[dduane]

9. About the buttermilk plant...

Hi everybody! In my secret identity as EuroCuisineLady over at the EuropeanCuisines site, I noticed your visits and dropped by to see who was so interested. :)

About the buttermilk plant in general: I get the sense that the stuff was usually very much a last-resort resource for those who needed something acidic to bake with (especially when using bread soda / baking soda as a leavening agent) and didn't have access to much fresh milk, especially in places where most of the cows might be dry at any given moment in the winter. These days I'd guess the plant is more of historical interest than anything else, as for anyone who's absolutely desperate to get buttermilk but can't buy it in the store, you can always get it by churning cream for butter (instructions here for those who might be interested: or check out this how-to guide from the much more knowledgeable Jonathan White at Bobolink Farm/Dairy). My only problem with this approach is that the fresh buttermilk is so good, it rarely gets into the soda bread -- which is usually the reason for churning in the first place -- but instead winds up inside me immediately.

We have some other home dairying info here on our pages for those who might be interested -- I took up the subject a little when we moved to Ireland 20+ years ago. The sour cream from scratch recipe works particularly well and turns out a really rich and entirely-too-habit-forming product which puts the commercial stuff to shame. (As it should be, since storebought sour cream hardly ever has cream in it any more: mostly it's cultured off skim milk and thickened with agar and whatnot.)

If you have any questions about any of this, please give me a shout here. Otherwise, I'm off to mind the shop (today is our site's busiest day of the year: we get snowed under with people looking for Irish recipes, and for my husband's Mum's soda bread recipe and the video tutorials that go with it).

All the best! -- Diane

[kfred]

10. Just bookmarked you

and thanks for stopping by!

[dduane]

12. Hey, a pleasure!

And it's always fun to find a new place to visit. :)

[wildflower]

11. Thanks, Diane! I hope you didn't mind me posting your site here...

I was just so fascinated by the buttermilk plant idea (and as housewolf and I have discussed, by these fermenting processes in general). I'll definitely be visiting your site again.

I've been wanting to try sour cream for a while now, maybe next week.

Haven't able to get myself to drink buttermilk yet, though. :)

I hope you'll visit again. :hi:

ON EDIT: Happy St. Patrick's Day!

[dduane]

13. Posting the site link is just fine!

:) Don't worry about it at all. We live to be linked to: it's a hobby site, really, and the more people find it, and find it useful, the happier I am.

The buttermilk drinking seems to be a love-it-or-hate-it kind of thing. My mother-in-law used to drink (weird stuff, now, brace yourself) buttermilk mixed with the local version of lemon soda. Very odd, but apparently this was a favorite summer drink in Northern Ireland in the 30's and 40's. Go figure. I like drinking buttermilk, but the thought of adding the lemon soda causes me to walk around clutching my head and going Ewwwww.

Strongly recommend the sour cream, anyway. There's also a recipe on the site someplace for homemade cream cheese. As they say over on I Can Has Cheezburger, OM NOM NOM NOM NOM. Boy, is that stuff great on crackers or what have you. And not hard to make (though keeping the cats out of the bag while it's draining is always a challenge).

Best! D.