Clabber – Make it and Bake it
Last week we talked about yeasts, and how to use them for leavening. Today, let’s talk about another culture – milk clabber. A staple of kitchens gone by, it’s still a useful thing to have around. You can use it for baking, for making other cultured dairy, and to kick-start that home yeast culture I mentioned last week.
So, first off – what’s clabber? Clabber is, very simply, soured milk. And before you Eeeww!! I should specify that there is a difference between soured milk and sour milk. Clabber is what happens when the bacteria and yeasts present in raw milk – from the cow and her environs – set up shopkeeping in the milk and begin to ferment. Many of these are different types of lactose fermenting bacteria. Yogurt is nothing but a very specialized clabber. Only raw milk CAN clabber. The milk you buy from the store has been pasteurized – and all those organisms killed. While that means that your store-bought milk has no bad bugs – like tuberculosis – it also means that it doesn’t have any of those lactic acid bacteria. So, when pasteurized milk goes “sour,” it’s been colonized by whatever bacteria are running around in your kitchen. And by that time, that milkfat has already started to go rancid, too.
Clabber, on the other hand, is the original “curds and whey.”
So, how do you make it? It’s fairly simple – take a sample of fresh, raw milk, place it in a sanitized class jar, and put it in a warm place – about 75-80F – for 2-5 days. Given time and warmth, the bacteria and yeast in your milk will start to digest the lactose in the milk (among other things) and drop the pH of the milk. It should start to separate into curds with some clear liquid – the whey. And it will have a pleasant, tangy smell and taste.
1/4 c. – 1 c. raw milk in a clean, sanitized jar
Place in a warm spot and check every 12 hours. Within 2-5 days, it should start to separate into curds and whey
Take your sample and inoculate a fresh batch of milk, or place it in the refrigerator for later use.
This process will proceed mostly on it’s own – although there is always the potential that your culture will get contaminated by some other organisms. If it smells bad, turns strange colors, or tastes off, throw it out and try again. Be careful to keep all of y our utensils as clean as possible, to minimize those chances. And be very careful when you collect your milk sample to keep THAT as clean as possible, too. If you get your raw milk from a cow other than your own, make very sure that the sanitation of both cow and milker are closely attended to. I have some specific ways to “cheat” a little – my sample was actually sent out for a culture at a laboratory. So I know exactly which organisms were in it when I got it.
Maintaining Your Culture
Once you have your culture going, the next challenge is to keep it going. Mostly because it’s easier to inoculate fresh milk with a bit of the clabber you already have than it is to let another sample of raw milk clabber, again. There are a lot more organisms in the clabber than in fresh milk, so the pH drops and populations rise much more quickly.
And, if you don’t have regular ready access to fresh raw milk, you can keep your clabber going with store bought milk. Ideally, this will be cream line (non-homogenized) milk that is not ultra-pasteurized. You certainly can just add 1/4 c. of clabber directly to a quart of this milk and let it incubate. But, if that milk has been open and in your refrigerator for a few days, it’s a better idea to heat it up to 180F then let it cool back down. This should kill off any contaminants and allow the clabber to get started without competition.
It will also make for firmer curds, because heating the milk denatures the proteins. This can come in handy if you want to drain off the way and use just the curds or just the whey.
Now, if you try to keep your clabber going indefinitely, eventually the populations of bacteria – and thus the flavor and behavior – are going to shift. This is a process called “attenuation.” The alternative is to freeze back some clabber from your initial batch, and use that to “restart” your working bottle of clabber every 5 batches or so.
Store your clabber in the refrigerator between uses, unless you intend to use it frequently.
Curds and Why
Now, why would you want to drain your curds?
Oh, so many reasons. The first is because the clabber curds can be used by themselves. They’re basically a rennet-less soft cheese, in the same class as cottage cheese, quark, ricotta, paneer, and other similar products. You can leave them to drain until they are a bit more dry if you want to crumble them over your salad. Or use them with more liquid along with a little sugar and spices to make a sweet filling. You could even make a cheesecake if you have enough. I’ll share a recipe in a little while to give you some inspiration.
The whey is useful, too. You can use it to kickstart a home yeast culture, which we’ll talk about in another post. Or you can use it to replace water in baked goods, or even in soups. It’s especially useful in creamy or tomato-based soups. You can also use it to ferment fruits and vegetables – a little whey will get lactic acid fermentation going faster.
Add a little acid and heat the whey to make some homemade ricotta cheese – although this will work better if you didn’t heat the milk for your clabber. You can also make pasta dough with whey for part of the water. The resulting pasta will be more pliable.
Or you could add some whey to your marinade to make use of the acid.
Drain your clabber in a sieve lined with cheesecloth in the refrigerator.
There are two other things we should talk about regarding your new clabber before we finish up for this post.
Cream with Culture
First, culturing cream. Add a couple tablespoons of your clabber to a pint of heavy cream (not ultrapasteurized, if you please). Voila. Creme fraiche. You can use it just like you’d use creme fraiche or sour cream. If you want it thicker, again strain it through some cheesecloth to get rid of some of the whey. Or, churn that cream for some delicious cultured butter. I did a post on that process, using a Swedish sweet cream culture, but clabber would work just as well. And don’t throw out the buttermilk! You can use it as you would whey. Or try it in place of store bought buttermilk in those old fashioned cake recipes, like Red Velvet or a Texas Sheet Cake.
Always Have a Back-Up
The last thing to mention is freezing back some of your culture. Freeze the entire culture – curds and whey together. You can freeze larger quantities to thaw and use as is. Or you can freeze small amounts to restart your culture in the future. I do this with all of my dairy cultures – yogurt, sour creams, buttermilks, etc. And I’ve found that one of the easiest ways to freeze them is in breast milk storage bags. I put about 4-6 oz in each bag, label it, and lay them flat to freeze. When I want to use some, I can usually just break off a tablespoon-sized chunk and thaw that to inoculate a new batch.
Up next – some recipes for baking with your new clabber. Stay tuned!
