buttermilk bread, for some values of 'buttermilk'

[alexseanchai]

Tea and cocoa are vastly improved by adding dairy, and coffee is near undrinkable without that splash of half and half. The cheapest way to get half and half is from Costco by the half gallon. I do not drink dairy nearly fast enough to get through an entire half gallon before it starts smelling off enough that I cannot drink it. It's not undrinkable, to be clear, but my taste buds say No, and I drink dairy fastest of anybody in the house.

I got bored of pouring the dairy down the drain.

So it turns out soured milk can be used for the same things buttermilk can. And it happens that my favorite cookbook, The Bread Machine Cookbook by Donna Rathnell German, has a recipe for buttermilk bread. Quantities below are for the medium variant of the recipe, since I wasn't sure enough it'd taste good to make the large:

1 cup water
2 tablespoons margarine or butter
1.5 teaspoons sugar
0.75 teaspoons salt
3 cups bread flour
0.25 cups buttermilk powder
2 teaspoons yeast

A problem is immediately obvious.

So I bothered bisexualbaker and checked the nutrition facts on both the first buttermilk powder on DuckDuckGo and the half and half, and ey advised me to substitute half and half for the water and also sugar for the buttermilk powder. (Give or take the couple teaspoons of sugar already in the recipe. I heaped the quarter cup a little.) So I did this thing, and ran the bread machine on dough cycle because this machine bakes weird, and I baked it according to the directions later in the book for baguettes:

When the dough cycle is done, halve the dough, roll each half flat, and roll those up to be two baguettes. Cover with a cloth and let rise 20 to 30 minutes. Bake at 400° Fahrenheit for 15 minutes or until golden.

(I find it helpful to turn the oven on, then, ideally the moment the digital display flips from 100° to 105°, turn the oven off and stick the baking sheet full of dough in there, with the oven light on so I remember there is cloth in there before I preheat the oven for the actual baking. That gives the dough a warm place to rise without risking curious cats putting their paws in it, neither of which is true of the kitchen counter this time of year. It might work with a colder oven, but the thing is, the display doesn't admit to lower temperatures than 100°, so I only know the oven has warmed up past the current room temperature of like 65° when it says it's at 105° and climbing. I do not want it to climb far, though, as the objective here is rising, not yet baking.)

…Long story short, I should've done the large dough. Possibly also put more butter on the bread and less in it? It didn't rise as much as I wanted, anyway, but it's lovely and savory and already half gone. Excellent, I have solved the problem of discarding the dairy.


ETA, later: Warming the dairy first also helps.

Comments

[hudebnik]

I've never heard of "buttermilk powder". But I've used unintentionally-soured milk to make Irish soda bread, which is raised not with yeast but with the acid-base reaction between the milk and baking soda.

[fuzzyred]

Yay for solving the problem of having to throw out the dairy!

[adrian_turtle]

I'm so glad you solved the dairy problem! Another approach is to freeze the milk in smaller containers. If you buy it by the half-gallon and use it by the tablespoon, it would take a lot of buttermilk bread to use all the surplus.

I don't drink cow's milk at all, so I freeze it so Vicki can have some in her tea. (I look for plastic bottles that wash out easily and have really secure lids. Those 20-ounce bottles for sweet tea are good for my purposes, but you might want something bigger.) I fill them 3/4 full, freeze them lying sideways so expansion won't be a problem, and shake them after thawing.