Bread and Butter

I am so inspired by the people in my life. I have one friend that makes all her own bread from wheat that she grinds herself--for a family of 11, no less. And then there is still anther friend that gives her family only raw milk and makes all her own butter, and buttermilk, and yogurt. We are a ways off from those accomplishments but we're still learning and making changes. Last week we made two batches of butter and I gave the french baguettes another try. Still fiddling with my yeast. I'm not sure why but I got a bad couple of batches from Wal-Mart, go figure. Then, I rushed the first batch of butter and out of four jars the kids were shaking only one of them turned. So the second batch I let the cream sit out overnight like I was supposed to and we had no problems. It goes to show that you really cannot rush these things. In the end we got this beautiful batch of butter.

A quart of whipping cream yielded 14oz of butter and a pint of butter milk. These are my wonky french baguettes from a questionable batch of yeast. They tasted wonderful, just rose a little unevenly and incompletely.