SOUR CREAM AND BUTTERMILK: WHAT THEY ARE AND HOW THEY ARE MADE AT HOME
Yes, sour cream and buttermilk are homemade fermented milk products. Pitcher souls, where do you think fermented and acidified dairy products came from? They were not invented by Danone, they were born in the houses, on the farms, in the huts of our ancestors.
Mysterious products such as sour cream, crème fraîche, cream or crème fraîche, and buttermilk sometimes appear among the ingredients of recipes from beyond our borders… These types of frosting are great for many types of cakes. Coffee cakes taste great with them.
I’ve tried to find out what they are, where they come from and how to make them at home. And what I have learned, which I am sure is clearly improvable, I am transcribing below.
Are you ready? Let’s see who’s got a nose for reading the whole article… If you don’t want a biochemistry lesson, you can shorten it by clicking on each heading in the index, but it’s all related, so don’t complain about not understanding anything:
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Index [hide]
1 Fermented dairy products
1.1 Effects of lactic acid
1.2 Who are these lactic acid bacteria?
2 What is sour cream
2.1 Differences between sour cream and crème fraîche
2.2 How to make homemade sour cream and crème fraîche
2.3 Sour cream recipes from the blog
3 What is the famous buttermilk
3.1 How to make homemade buttermilk
3.2 Is buttermilk as good as it is painted?
4 References and sources
4.1 My sources:
4.2 Congratulations!
FERMENTED DAIRY PRODUCTS
milk composition
The milk has the typical composition that you see in the figurine on the right.
Raw milk and its derivatives ferment naturally if left at room temperature, and what does this mean?
There are lactic acid bacteria in the environment, which feed on one of the components of milk.
The part of the milk that the lactic acid bacteria feed on is lactose, the main sugar it contains. Lactic acid bacteria extract energy for life by converting lactose into lactic acid. This is called lactic fermentation.
lactic fermentation
Ever since some of our ancestors tasted fermented milk or cream and liked it, we have not stopped drinking it as it is or using it in cooking; even fermenting it on purpose.
EFFECTS OF LACTIC ACID
It acidifies the milk or cream, which slows the growth of other types of bacteria, including pathogenic ones. It therefore contributes to their preservation. It is therefore not unusual for humans to favour fermentation in order to prolong the preservation of dairy products.
Acidification causes the dispersion of casein, one of the proteins present in that 4% of solids that are not fat, which is no longer isolated in a multitude of skeins and forms a continuous network that traps all the other components, which coagulates the milk and cream; the clearest case is yogurt.
WHO ARE THESE LACTIC ACID BACTERIA?
Two fundamental species:
The famous Lactobacillus that are mentioned in some ads as if we all knew what they were talking about and they stay so hot. And we, as mimes, get the complex that this must be something very important and we swallow it without complaining. Fight back, damn it.
The Lactococcus.
Lactic acid bacteria are also classified according to the temperatures they prefer to proliferate:
Thermophilic – their optimum temperature is around 40-45 degrees. Yoghurt bacteria are thermophilic. They are not the ones that traditionally ferment creams and buttermilk. Their action is relatively fast, in 6-8 hours a yogurt can be ready.
Mesophilic – they prefer lower temperatures, between 25º and 30º. According to McGee it is the type of bacteria used today for industrial planting in acidified creams and creams, and in buttermilk. Their action is slower, as it usually takes 24 hours for the product to be ready.
The consumption of acid creams or creams originated in temperate zones, where the fermentation was carried out by mesophilic bacteria (25-30º), while yogurt originated in warmer zones, where thermophilic bacteria fermented the milk (40º-45º).
WHAT IS SOUR CREAM
Acidified cream is the fatty part of milk, which separates and ferments. To ferment it, lactic acid bacteria are added and allowed to do their job.
The lactic acid that is formed acidifies the cream, which in turn coagulates the casein, which is why the thickening is the sign of having obtained the sour cream.
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN SOUR CREAM AND CRÈME FRAÎCHE
Apart from the composition of the original milk, which varies according to the breed of cattle and the feed (the cream of a Ukrainian cow will certainly not be the same as that of a Normandy cow), the main difference is the fat.
Crème frâiche has a higher fat content, around 30%, so it looks and tastes more buttery than sour cream. It has about 20% fat.
If you say that cream or sour cream is the fat of the milk, why is the fat content not 100%? Because the fat is never separated in a pure form, it always carries water. Even butter has water in it.
HOW TO MAKE HOMEMADE SOUR CREAM AND CRÈME FRAÎCHE
Adding lactic acid bacteria to a good cream. The bacteria that ferment these creams are mesophilic (25-30º), and they are not those of yogurt.
But we can use some yogurt to ferment in that same temperature range and get something very similar. It won’t be exactly the same, but it’s good, I made it for this crème fraîche ice cream.
The ideal is to use mesophilic bacteria, which are sold in cultures to make cheese.
Another homemade method is to add an acid like vinegar or lemon juice, which acidifies the cream and causes the coagulation of the casein just like lactic acid does. The taste is not exactly the same, nor does the resulting cream have all the beneficial by-products of a fermented cream, but it is useful for cooking.
HOMEMADE SOUR CREAM
PRINT
Preparation
24 hours
Cooked
Total
24 hours
How to make crème fraîche and sour cream at home
Author: Miriam García
Cooking: International
Rations: 24h
INGREDIENTS
Fermented cream
250 ml cream or liquid cream (without previous thickener)
15 ml commercial sour cream (or equivalent amount of mesophilic culture)
Lemon or vinegar substitute
250 ml cream or liquid cream (without previous thickener)
15 ml of whole milk
¾ tsp. white vinegar or lemon juice
INSTRUCTIONS
Fermented cream
In a container with a lid we mix the cream with the sour cream or the culture.
Acid substitute
In a container with a lid, mix the cream with the milk and vinegar or lemon juice.
sour cream creme fraiche
Common to both methods
We cover and let it rest for 24 hours in a warm place (better not to go below 20-22º).
After that time the mixture will have thickened and developed a sour taste.
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sour cream
Whether with a cream cheese culture or with lemon juice, sour cream comes out great and creamy
SOUR CREAM RECIPES FROM THE BLOG
Russian apple pie
Crème fraîche ice cream
By the way, the famous mascarpone cheese, which is not really a cheese but is related to sour cream, is prepared with cream that is heated to concentrate it and then coagulated equally with acid. You have the recipe for homemade mascarpone in the blog.
WHAT IS THE FAMOUS BUTTERMILK
The buttermilk that has become known since we Iberians started reading American pastry blogs is buttermilk, the liquid that remains after beating the cream of the milk into butter. If you’ve been churning cream and made butter, you’ll know what I’m talking about.
In the past, when cream was separated from milk and left to stand, it contained lactic acid bacteria that were already active. When this cream was whipped to obtain butter, both the butter and the whey itself were already somewhat fermented and the whey ended up thickening and becoming somewhat cloudy due to acidification. This is the real buttermilk.
In the United States, where it is popular for baking, a buttermilk substitute is mainly marketed, prepared by fermenting skimmed milk. After all, the liquid that remains when the cream is removed from the milk is similar to buttermilk.
HOW TO MAKE HOMEMADE BUTTERMILK
To make buttermilk at home, you have to add bacteria from a purchased buttermilk to buttermilk or skim milk. In short, the same thing we do when we make homemade yogurt, we add a portion of purchased yogurt, which has the necessary bacteria, to the milk.
Ha! You tell me, where the hell do I find buttermilk? No, it’s not easy to find in Spain yet.
No, I haven’t tried to make buttermilk by adding yogurt to skimmed milk, it’s on my to-do list. But if you can make sour cream I don’t see why it won’t work with buttermilk. It’s another thing to make the product look like the real thing.
As a substitute for real buttermilk many use what is nothing more than cut up milk: milk to which lemon juice or vinegar is added.
HOMEMADE BUTTERMILK
PRINT
Preparation
24 hours
Cooked
Total
24 hours
How to make homemade buttermilk
Author: Miriam García
Cooking: International
Rations: 24h
INGREDIENTS
Fermented Buttermilk
250 ml of skimmed milk (some people use whole or half milk)
15 ml commercial buttermilk (or equivalent amount of mesophilic culture)
Buttermilk substitute
250 ml of whole milk
1 tbsp. white vinegar or lemon juice
INSTRUCTIONS
Fermented Buttermilk
We mix the milk with commercial buttermilk or culture.
We cover and let it rest for 24 hours in a warm place (that does not go below 22-25º).
Buttermilk substitute
We mix the milk with the vinegar or the lemon juice.
Cover and leave to stand for 10-15 minutes.
What we get with this is to cut the milk, it will be filled with lumps. The consistency is simulated using whole milk; the thickening that is not achieved because there is no fermentation is simulated using whole milk instead of skimmed.
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One question that may occur to you: Can yogurt be used as a substitute for buttermilk? Well, yes, because even though the taste won’t be exactly the same because both are not obtained from the same bacteria, a yogurt looks as much or as little like buttermilk as the cut milk that is often used instead of real buttermilk.