How much cream is needed for 1 kg of butter. Butter. Churning butter out of milk

Is it possible to make "Vologda butter" yourself?

Why not?

You will be with your grandmother in the Vologda region in the summer, or you will simply come as tourists to Vologda, Gryazovets, Mezhdurechensky, Totemsky or some other area of ​​traditional Vologda animal husbandry, stay for a day, turn off your mobile phone to a hairdryer, live the quiet life of a villager and make some butter with your own hands ...

To do this, you need:

1. Refrigerator or cellar.

2. Separator or low wide containers with a lid, glass or enamelled. Boomans used wooden or tin pots, you can use enamel pots.

3. Large enamel pot and gas stove for pasteurization.

4. Butter churn. The Bumans had one, but you hardly need to acquire one.

5. And, of course, you need a local cow, and a hostess who will milk you. Of course, you can try it yourself, but I doubt very much that you will be able to milk the required amount the first time.

It is better to free the refrigerator from other products, especially with specific smells (herring, sausage), and if this cannot be done, then put all products in double plastic bags. The refrigerator must first be washed with baking soda and dried thoroughly before turning on.

So - from the evening milking, collect some milk from the cows that grazed in the meadow with traditional Vologda forbs. (Milk from cows that ate silage or mixed feed - "Vologda" butter will not work.

Now into a separator or settling tanks. (I will note - in the old days, separation was carried out at a temperature of 35 - 37 degrees).

To obtain cream by settling for Vologda butter (sweet cream), milk must be defended at a temperature of about 12 degrees for 12 - 18 hours.

If you want to get a little more oil - stand for longer, 24, 36 hours, but then you will get peasant or Holstein oil, not "Vologda".

Now - the cream needs to be removed, which is more convenient to do with a "sour cream" or "sauce" spoon, which is similar in shape to a "Schwarz's" skimmer (in the picture). You can just use a large wooden spoon, while trying not to "catch" the milk.

As a result, you should have a cream with a fat content of 24-28%, which you will pasteurize.

And here, as they say, there are possible options, which was noted at the beginning of the XX century in the article by F. Galenius “Dairy farming and cattle breeding. A few words about the production of Parisian oil. "

I quote: “Milk obtained from cows that eat good feed gives a good aroma at 72 R (90 ° C), while herbal milk (spring grazing) exhibits aroma at 68 R (85 ° C). But milk obtained from cows kept on poor feed, as well as new and old milk, gives a relatively good aroma only at a temperature of 75 - 76 R (94 - 95 ° C). The cream is warmed up for at least 10 minutes and not more than 50 minutes. "

How do you do this? Of course, you can't just put a pot of cream on the stove. You need to put a tank with hot water on the stove, and already in it - a container with cream.

So - the cream, depending on the quality, is pasteurized at a temperature of 85 - 95 degrees for 3 - 5 to 50 minutes, then rapid cooling to 2 - 6 degrees, and at this temperature the cream should ripen for 5-7 hours. (At the beginning of the 20th century, the cream was ripened for 8 - 18 hours). During this time, they need to be mixed 3-4 times with a clean wooden spatula or spoon for 3 minutes.

(A little secret - you can quickly cool the cream using a salt-ice mixture. You can experiment in winter by mixing salt with snow, only carefully, not with your hands, since the temperature drops to minus 18 degrees. Here in this mixture, where ice or snow is prepared salt, and dip the pot or pan of hot pasteurized cream to cool.)

Now - knocking down.

Bumans did this in a churn, which was a horizontally located barrel with a volume of 100 liters with a mechanical drive, with a hermetically closing hatch and a viewing window. In this churn, pre-washed with hot and then cold water, about 40 liters of cream were poured at a temperature of 7-12 degrees. (To be precise, for 100 liters of volume - 38 liters of cream). Rotation - from 60 times per minute (Dutch) to 90 - 120 times per minute according to the Holstein method (Bumans).

At home, you can churn butter in a three to five liter jar with a screw cap, no more than half full. (Ideally, one third.) If it is more, the oil will blend too long, if it is less, it will be too fast. In both cases, the quality of the oil will be so low that it will not be possible to call it “Vologda”.

How to shoot down? You can - manually, in turn, shaking the jar with the whole family. You can - rolling the can on the table. For the first five minutes of knocking down, open the lid a couple of times, releasing air. The total churning time is 45 - 60 minutes, depending on the temperature and the applied effort. The result will be visible - the cream will lighten significantly, becoming almost transparent, and grains of butter the size of buckwheat are formed. The resulting buttermilk is poured through cheesecloth or a sieve, and the butter is molded by squeezing out excess moisture. It is possible - even directly with your hands, but it is better with wooden shovels, ideally with alder ones, from time to time removing drops of moisture with a clean cloth. (Each time, a cloth or a piece of gauze should be washed in hot, then in cold water and wrung out).

"The oil should be squeezed out until a transparent dew or tear appears on it, which stands out very noticeably if you cut a piece of squeezed oil with a spatula."

If in figures - then the water in the "Parisian" or "Vologda" oil should be 10 - 15%.

Well, now a pack of "Vologda butter" bought in a store doesn't seem so expensive to you? Of course, now, with modern equipment, the techniques for making "Vologda butter" are completely different.

Now the milk passes through a plate heat exchanger, then into a separator, where the cream is separated, and again through pipes into a cooler, into a tubular pasteurizer, and again the cream is separated at a temperature of 75 degrees, then into a butter maker, where the cream is simultaneously cooled to 18 - 22 degrees , and a process similar to butter churning occurs. Similar is not a random word. Even in the modern, high-tech "continuous" method of making "Vologda" oil, the process of oil formation remains mysterious, similar to the alchemical manipulation of substances using spells and the philosopher's stone.

"Converting high-fat cream to butter in a butter maker is a complex physicochemical process not fully understood."

(V. Tverdokhleb et al. Vologda butter-making)

In general, oil flows out of a plate or cylindrical butter maker, which immediately solidifies in the forms, but what happens inside ...

This is as much a mystery as the process of creating milk in a cow's udder.

In a lamellar or cylindrical butter maker, pasteurized cream can be added to the oil emulsion so that oil of a certain fat content comes out of the lamellar or cylindrical butter maker. The oil sampled on a wooden spatula should solidify approximately 40 seconds after exiting the oil maker. If not, it means that the oil has been in the apparatus for too long and will be too soft and fusible.

* * *
The question is - is it possible to make "Vologda butter", say, in Altai or in the Volgograd region. Khrenushki!

In the Volgograd region, even black-and-white cows brought from the Vologda region will give milk either meadow or steppe, depending on the location of the pasture. Accordingly, the oil obtained here will be meadow or steppe.

What's the cow's tongue ...

Long, very long time ago, people noticed that the taste, smell and even shade of milk depends on what the cow eats. So they said - what a cow has on its tongue is in milk. This was used by witches and village sorcerers to "spoil" the cow, and then rid the milk of the unpleasant odor, receiving a reward and strengthening of authority for that. For example, you could toss a few heads of garlic soaked in salt water to a cow, and then smear something else from the inside on the milk pan and pots that were being dried on the fence, and the milk took on an unpleasant and, most importantly, an incomprehensible smell. (Experienced housewives could recognize the garlic smell, which required a masking additive).

And the reasons for many so-called flaws in milk and butter lie in the composition of their feed, which has long been noted by shepherds, and experienced milk housewives could determine where the cow was grazing today: if early in the morning the cow goes out to the pasture hungry and eats "snowdrops" (several species of perennial anemone), then the milk will acquire a grassy bitter taste and a slight reddish tint. Lupine, field mustard, vetch seeds give the milk bitterness, and wormwood gives the characteristic bitterness of "steppe" oil. "Frog grass" (water pepper) - and the milk becomes bluish, from ivan-da-marya - bluish. "Butter grass" (zhiryanka) - and the milk becomes sticky and viscous.

Fodder rutabaga increases milk yield, but a large amount produces a bitter taste and characteristic odor. Carrots are a source of carotene, but if you give more of it, the milk takes on an orange hue. Beet tops should not be fed fresh, otherwise the milk will quickly turn sour. (And if you let it dry for several days, then the oxalic acid evaporates).

Wild garlic, onions, turnips, cabbage, wormwood give the milk a smell, and when fed with potato pulp (starch production waste), the milk becomes watery. The fat content of milk decreases from sour feed, from the cabbage leaf, and the fat content increases from oatmeal, legumes, clover, as well as wheat bran and ground barley.

Corn kernels and compound feed based on it make the oil softer and the peas harder. Oilcake (flaxseed, sunflower and cottonseed) changes the structure of milk proteins, and it folds poorly when rennet is added.

If you feed the cow with hay from low-lying meadows, from the lowlands, then do not expect fat milk, but hay from forbs of flooded meadows gives excellent milk. It is not recommended to give dairy cows more than 1.5 kg of fishmeal per day, otherwise the milk will acquire a characteristic fishy smell.

And clean, odorless water should be plenty, at a temperature of 14 - 16 degrees in summer, and heated - in winter.

Even the ambient temperature matters - if the barn is hot and humid, the fat content of the milk decreases.

Now let's see what the nature of the Vologda Oblast offers to feed dairy cows?

“The specificity of the Vologda Oblast fodder base is primarily determined by the abundance of meadows, which currently account for 27.3% of all agricultural land, while the bulk of the meadows for cutting and pasture use (98.2%) is located on normal and temporarily excessively moistened dry lands.

The botanical composition of meadow grasses is completely unique, including both cereals and legumes in optimal proportions. The main types of cereal meadow plants are: meadow fescue, meadow timothy, hedgehog, among leguminous crops the most common are meadow and creeping clover, meadow rank. This ensures the receipt of green mass, suitable both for eating by animals in the pasture, and for preparing various types of juicy and roughage forages, combining a sufficient amount of energy and nutrients with a high degree of digestibility, which provides the necessary conditions for the synthesis of milk with high technological properties suitable for the production of "Vologda oil" (Olga Kotova).

In 1899, at the Dairy Exhibition in St. Petersburg, this was especially noted by British dairy experts: “The British experts expressed the wish that at future exhibitions, butter from different areas, so different in quality of pasture and grass, such as, for example, the north of Russia and Siberia, were exhibited separately, because by the difference in taste, storage ability and different distances from the market, it is difficult to compare them. "

(V.N. Vereshchagin)

“They silage cabbage and beet leaves and large grasses in a huge vat dug into the ground, sprinkling with salt. They feed this food little by little. This great milk is an aphrodisiac. Vereshchagin does not like the bard. The milk is liquid, almost not fat, the cheese is bad, the cow wears out quickly. The slightest acid in the stillage - cheese and butter are very bad.

(I. Kolyshko, Vereshchagin school and cheese-making artels)

“The approximate diet of a cow when kept in a stall should be as follows: meadow hay - 8 kg, spring straw - 4, grass silage - 5, potatoes - 4, fodder beets - 3, red fodder carrots - 2, food waste - 8, grain leftovers - 0.5, wheat bran - 1 kg. In addition, the cow needs salt - about 70 g per day. In the summer, an adult cow is supposed to have about 50 kg of green fodder per day. A cow cannot eat more than half a centner of grass per day, so if milk yield is more than 12 liters, feed the animal with something extra, for example, food waste. "

(M. Grigorieva, veterinarian)

From the point of view of a veterinarian - maybe right. A cow with such a diet, it is quite possible, will feel good, and there will be a lot of milk, but this milk will not make Vologda butter.

In general, the same as with the record-breaking cows, giving tens of tons of white liquid per year, and our cows, giving a little, but fragrant, fatty milk.

Theoretically, of course, one can imagine how hay is brought from the Vologda Oblast to the south, soaked there in cold water, doused with steam, and after that Vologda cows are fed with Vologda fodder in order to obtain an oil similar to “Vologda” as a result ...

Chukhonskoe oil

Fearing the complexity of the many vessels for settling the cream, you can beat the butter from milk using traditional technology. To do this, collect milk from the evening milk yield (which stood for 36 hours) and morning milk yield (24 hours), pour it into an enameled bucket or tank and keep it in a warm place until it slightly sour. After that, sour cream is removed from the curdled milk, and butter can be knocked out of it.

Churning butter out of milk

A friend of mine in the village, when he brought milk in a cistern to a collection point 20 kilometers from the farm, lowered alder or aspen logs on a rope into the cistern, and in the evening he took out the same log from the cistern, which became heavier by half a kilogram of excellent butter.

A scam, of course, but the butter was excellent!

But - not "Vologda"!

Why am I?

Even if our milk is taken to Moscow or St. Petersburg, then real "Vologda butter" cannot be made! For half a thousand versts of turbulence, the milk will simply go astray, and no matter how you pasteurize it after that, whatever one may say in butter makers, you cannot turn the minced meat back.

70 - 100 kilometers of transportation is the maximum that our milk can withstand without irreversible biochemical and mechanical processes. Actually, this was the case quite recently, when the entire Vologda Oblast was covered with a network of creameries.

And yet - the oil that you knock down yourself, with the exact observance of all conditions, will be guaranteed of higher quality and tastier than the oil obtained by the method of continuous oil formation.

Just do not be lazy, and remember - 40% of the working time in the manufacture of oil should be spent on washing dishes and equipment. It is better to use mustard powder and baking soda as detergents.