BREADMAKING WITH BUTTERMILK, YOGURT, COTTAGE CHEESE AND OTHER DAIRY PRODUCTS We are continuing to talk about using dairy products in your breads. Although this is not a necessary ingredient in bread making, dairy products give the breads different flavours, textures and richness to the breads.
Heritage Bread Recipe with Milk Buttermilk: In times past, buttermilk was what was left over from making butter. Nowadays, commercial buttermilk is cultured from lowfat or nonfat milk, usually, and varies a lot in flavour from lowfat or nonfat milk, usually, and varies a lot in flavour from brand to brand both in consistency and tartness. If you make your own butter, you know how good buttermilk can be, but when a recipe calls for buttermilk on our site, we mean the commercial kind. Since is is almost always salted, the quantity of added salt in these recipes is low. If you have unsalted buttermilk, 1/4 tsp. salt per cup of milk will bring the dough to the saltiness intended in the recipe. Yogurt: Yogurts give bread tenderness, a fine texture, and a unique richness of flavour that is fuller and tangier.jpg) than that you get from buttermilk. Be more particular about the freshness of the yogurt you use in baking: a lot of extra bacteria from the air can set up housekeeping in a batch of yogurt, and some of them make the bread taste weird. Cottage Cheese: Cottage cheese plays the part of a liquid in bread, providing impressive amounts or protein and calcium and extra rising power too. Bread made with cottage cheese is usually very light and moist. For all its advantages, though, these days a cup of cottage cheese can more than double the price of a loaf of homemade bread, so unless you are looking for a way to sneak a lot of protein and calcium into someone's diet, it's a pricey option. Cottage Rye Bread Cheese: From Tillamook to Gruyere, cheese is even more expensive. Delicious on whole wheat bread, cheese just doesn't make much of a show in it, unless you use a powerful lot. But if you have an occasion that merits really sensational cheesy rolls or loaves, it can be done, for sure. Choose any plain light bread recipe,fresh milk and add at least a cup of grated sharp cheese to the dough for each loaf of bread, working the grated cheese into the dough after the kneading is completed. To help the flavour sing, include some complementary spice or herb: for example, a Tbsp. of dill weed with Swiss, or a teaspoon of chili powder with cheddar. The milk protein and the added fat from the cheese will enhance the rise, so the bread should be light an airy. Be careful not to overbake cheesy rolls or breadsticks, or they may become dry.  Butter: Butter is the only fat I use that can be called shortening, meaning that it gives the bread crumb the velvety-soft quality called short. Because it can stay unmelted in the dough, butter actually lubricates the gluten, making the loaf noticeably higher. (You have to use at least twice as much liquid oil to get the same effect)
If you want the butter you use to do all it can for you, add it cool, rather than melted. The French method is to smear the butter onto the board after the kneading is near done, working it into the dough until it disappears and the dough is smooth and lustrous. You can also cut (or grate) cold butter into tiny pieces and knead it in--again, after the gluten has been developed as well. In either case, the lubricating effect is unmistakable. It may seem like a time-saver to melt the butter, but though you get the flavour that way, you don't get the extra rise. As to the flavour of butter--well, what could be more delectable? And yet with the whole grains, which have their own character and are not merely backfrop like white flour, butter's taste plays a supporting role: very good indeed, but subtler than the flavour of the grain itself. Note here that we like to use ordinary butter in the recipes; if you use sweet butter you may want to increase the salt by a pinch. Salt is added to butter as a preservative, and it does help prevent if from going rancid: sweet butter keeps much less well. Sweet or salted, don't be tempted to use up rancid butter in your baking. Rancid fat is not only unhealthful but can spoil the bread. The next posts will be starting a series of fancy baking with the Bosch Universal Plus Kitchen Machine, making cupcakes, pastries and rolled fondant. |
We are continuing to talk about using dairy products in your breads. Although this is not a necessary ingredient in bread making, dairy products give the breads different flavours, textures and richness to the breads..jpg)
than that you get from buttermilk. Be more particular about the freshness of the yogurt you use in baking: a lot of extra bacteria from the air can set up housekeeping in a batch of yogurt, and some of them make the bread taste weird. 
Butter: Butter is the only fat I use that can be called shortening, meaning that it gives the bread crumb the velvety-soft quality called short. Because it can stay unmelted in the dough, butter actually lubricates the gluten, making the loaf noticeably higher. (You have to use at least twice as much liquid oil to get the same effect)
own character and are not merely backfrop like white flour, butter's taste plays a supporting role: very good indeed, but subtler than the flavour of the grain itself. 
