Item — HN Reader

> I'm surprised culturing is reduced to a single throwaway line

Yes, as a (lapsed) amateur butter maker, I'd say this is the main difference between European butter and US butter, not the fat content. If you make your own butter with ordinary cream, it'll taste bland like US butter, irrespective of the fat content. You need to add a culture. Not just any culture, which you might get if you leave your cream out of the fridge long enough before starting, but one of the right cultures. Search for "cultured butter" on the interweb for further information.

As an aside, my personal view is that making your own butter doesn't provide anywhere near the same return on investment as making your own bread - home made butter takes ages, doesn't really taste that much better, and can cost more money, while home made bread doesn't take that long, and can taste a lot better.

2 comments

> I'd say this is the main difference between European butter and US butter, not the fat content.

Brit here; British supermarket butter isn't cultured. Most French butter isn't cultured either. Characterising european butter as cultured butter is misleading.

> As an aside, my personal view is that making your own butter doesn't provide anywhere near the same return on investment as making your own bread - home made butter takes ages, doesn't really taste that much better, and can cost more money, while home made bread doesn't take that long, and can taste a lot better.

There is a good book called "Make the Bread, Buy the Butter" which covers what foods give the best return on time, effort, and money invested.

It probably depends if you have a good baker near you. (I really don't although some of the local "craft" breads carried by a couple local stores aren't bad.)

But philosophically, it makes a lot of sense generally. You're not going to make everything from scratch or near-scratch so it makes sense to focus on the stuff you can't readily buy or which you genuinely enjoy the making process.

It really depends on the kind of bread you like too. It's true for bog standard wheat sourdoughs and stuff but not for more complex breads like borodinsky [1] which has steps that take several days and include everything from boiling water to molasses.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borodinsky_bread