I recently used the Joy of Cooking's recipe for Irish-American Soda Bread as the foundation of a kitchen experiment. JoC is usually a great reference and an excellent starting-point for me. I rarely have all-out success with their recipes as-printed, but who wants to follow a recipe verbatim anyway?
What caught me this time was the following ingredients:
4 tbsp butter
2/3 c. buttermilk
The butter was meant to be melted and whipped into the buttermilk with an egg.
Now, buttermilk is the by-product of whipping cream into butter. So by adding melted butter to the buttermilk, aren't you just re-constituting the original heavy cream? Even the proportions look about right here.
So why?
4 comments:
Hey!
Now, buttermilk is the by-product of whipping cream into butter. So by adding melted butter to the buttermilk, aren't you just re-constituting the original heavy cream?True buttermilk is(/used to be) produced that way, but it is more or less impossible to find true buttermilk (and most recipes don't expect it anyways). Modern buttermilk is produced by fermenting whole milk with a lactic acid bacteria culture. The result of this process (cultured buttermilk + butter) is much more acidic than heavy cream would be, and hence will react with the baking soda -- heavy cream wouldn't (or wouldn't as much, I'm not entirely sure how acidic it is). Some info here. (I'm almost certain I originally read about this in On Food and Cooking; here's the relevant section via google books.)
Ohhhhhh! Thank you Kyle! I knew I could count on you to come through with kitchen science factoids. That one was driving me a little nuts too... so thanks indeed.
http://homecooking.about.com/od/cookingfaqs/f/faqbuttermilk.htm says: "You might be surprised to learn there is no butter, per se, in buttermilk, and it is lower in fat than sweet milk. Old-fashioned homemade buttermilk is the slightly sour, residual liquid which remains after butter is churned, ie. milk from the butter or buttermilk. It was usually flecked with tiny spots of sweet, creamy butter that did not quite make it to the top to be skimmed. "
This is what I always thought. And BTW both Patrick and I make that J of C soda bread, and we use yogurt (low or full fat) in place of buttermilk. ALso carraway seeds and currents ... and I've done orange zest and cranberries ... and it's nothing like anybody ever had in the auld sod.
Yr. favorite Aunt (right? right?)
Irene
There is a bakery in Berkeley & Oakland (La Farine) that makes an apricot soda bread that I *adore*. A good friend used to work there and whenever I eat it now, it reminds me of her. Lightly sweet and tangy, I highly recommend!
love,
your favorite niece (right? right?)
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