Soda Farls from fermented milk

[Gayle]

DH brought me home a book on Irish Traditional Cooking (fab book, who knew there were so many ways to dress a pig's head?!), and I was intrigued by the mention of a "buttermilk plant". Buttermilk is used in a lot of Irish baking recipes, but it's often hard to get hold of outside of Ireland. In fact, even where I live many shops don't stock it. So I thought I'd give it a go.



The instructions said to "cream 30g of yeast with 30g of sugar until creamy". That made little sense as I only have dry yeast, so I ignored that and made a yeast starter with a packet of bread yeast and a tablespoon of sugar, in a little warm milk and water. This was added to "1.2 litres of tepid milk and water", as per instructions, in a santisable vessel.

Five days later it smells, well, not like milk. Kinda like buttermilk, but vaguely alcoholic. Time to give it a try.



I pured the milk into a bowl, through a sieve with a boiled muslin cloth in it to hold back what should apparently be clumps of yeast. I ot specks of what might be yeast.

So I mix it up 375ml of the buttermilk with 450g of soda bread flour and 1tsp salt. The execllent thing about soda bread is that is requires hardly any kneading or rising time. Just needs shaped into a round, cut into four, and popped on the hot griddle pan.



Once it's coloured a bit on both sides, it usually needs to go in the oven for 10 minutes or so to get the middle cooked, then when it's out it gets wrapped up in several tea towels to finish it's cooking and soften the outsides. YUM



So the sodas were a success - but is the plant? No idea. I rinsed and scraped what I could back off the muslin, and added it to another lot of milk and water in the re-cleaned and sanitised jar. I probably should have used a couple of packets of yeast to start with, but I'll see how this goes. It might need another yeast starter added to it, as the yeast is supposed to keep growing and in theory be alive forever as a buttermilk maker. It is supposed to be strained every five days, and it makes more than a litre each time. I might need more buttermilk recipes or well be sick of farls and pancakes in no time!

 

[calumscott]

They look simply stunning!!!

 

[alanywiseman.]

They look really good. Red velvet cake uses buttermilk and is very tastey!

 

[Hawks]

They do look good :thumb: - I have always cheated and used milk with a touch of vinegar instead of buttermilk, but this sounds interesting :hmm:

 

[Brewtrog]

Sounds cool. I was always taught buttermilk was the leftovers from making butter, which you can do by shaking double cream in a kilner jar, that way you get butter and buttermilk. But I may have heard wrong. I've never actually tried it this way, I just bought the buttermilk from Morrisons.

 

[Hawks]

Sounds cool. I was always taught buttermilk was the leftovers from making butter, which you can do by shaking double cream in a kilner jar, that way you get butter and buttermilk. But I may have heard wrong. I've never actually tried it this way, I just bought the buttermilk from Morrisons.

You're right - I assumed this was a better substitute than just adding some vinegar or lemon juice ( which just splits the milk )

 

[Gayle]

Sounds cool. I was always taught buttermilk was the leftovers from making butter

Yep that's what is, but I've never tried making butter, it's just shaking cream in a jar isn't it? I've heard you need to do a lot of jar shaking!

They do look good :thumb: - I have always cheated and used milk with a touch of vinegar instead of buttermilk, but this sounds interesting :hmm:

Any sour milk seems to work; vinegar, lemon juice, cream of tartar, yoghurt etc all make milk disgustingly sour! Sometimes it has curdled though. Some people claim buttermilk is a very healthy drink, but it's an aqquired taste :sick:

I've worked out this is cheap to make, about 25p a litre, so if I only get a couple of batches I won't have wasted any money!

 

[Brewtrog]

Sounds cool. I was always taught buttermilk was the leftovers from making butter

Yep that's what is, but I've never tried making butter, it's just shaking cream in a jar isn't it? I've heard you need to do a lot of jar shaking!

They do look good :thumb: - I have always cheated and used milk with a touch of vinegar instead of buttermilk, but this sounds interesting :hmm:

Any sour milk seems to work; vinegar, lemon juice, cream of tartar, yoghurt etc all make milk disgustingly sour! Sometimes it has curdled though. Some people claim buttermilk is a very healthy drink, but it's an aqquired taste :sick:

Yeah it's supposedly about 10 mins before you start seeing any results, and then a bit longer before it's fully split.
Any sour milk does work, the sourness comes from acids, whichever you add to make it sour. The acid reacts with the baking soda to form CO2, which makes the farls rise.

 

[narmour]

You can make amazing wheaten loaf with buttermilk...

1 bag coarse wholemeal
8 tbsp plain flour
1 handful pin head oats (optional)
3 pints buttermilk
1 heaped teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 level teaspoon salt


Mix it all together, it should have the consistency of thick porridge. Divide between 3 pregreased loaf tins.

Bake at 180oC for 45 minutes. Turn the oven down to 160oC and cook for another 15 minutes.

Check the loaves by tapping the underside, it's done if it sounds hollow. if the top isn't brown enough turn the oven up to full whack and leave in for another 10 minutes. Depends how crispy you like your crust.

 

[narmour]

Sounds cool. I was always taught buttermilk was the leftovers from making butter

Yep that's what is, but I've never tried making butter, it's just shaking cream in a jar isn't it? I've heard you need to do a lot of jar shaking!

You can make butter in an electric cake mixer by beating cream beyond whipped consistency . I've never tried it myself but I've seen it done on the telly.


http://www.ehow.com/how_6691133_make-butter-kitchenaid-mixer.html

 

[Gayle]

You can make amazing wheaten loaf with buttermilk...

1 bag coarse wholemeal
8 tbsp plain flour
1 handful pin head oats (optional)
3 pints buttermilk
1 heaped teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 level teaspoon salt

Thanks for the recipe :) by "coarse wholemeal" do you mean wholemeal flour? Or just the wheat bran stuff on it's own?

I forgot to strain the buttermilk plant after 5 days, it's now separated and curdled I'm terrible at keeping any kind of plant.

 

[narmour]

You can make amazing wheaten loaf with buttermilk...

1 bag coarse wholemeal
8 tbsp plain flour
1 handful pin head oats (optional)
3 pints buttermilk
1 heaped teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 level teaspoon salt

Thanks for the recipe :) by "coarse wholemeal" do you mean wholemeal flour? Or just the wheat bran stuff on it's own?

I forgot to strain the buttermilk plant after 5 days, it's now separated and curdled I'm terrible at keeping any kind of plant.

Yeah sorry should've clarified it's wholemeal flour. You can get it in Tesco, Allinson I think. You should also be able to get buttermilk in there... Dale farm do it. It's in a Yellow and white pint carton. Check in by the milk. I've seen it in Tesco in Ards, Lisburn, and all the Belfast ones so it should be in your local.

:hat: