It took me 10 years to master this

So, it's the first day of the journey of bread with butter, and it's going to be a great day. The first day is where most of the base is established for what will be the perfect bread experience with butter on the third day. And the first thing I'm going to start with is this fermented butter. Now, to make butter, of course, you need a good fresh milk cream. This cream is from Batenque Farm Valley, in the interior of New York State, which is the best possible product I could have in my hands. Which, in return, will give me the best possible butter I can make. I'm going to use 3 liters of fresh milk cream, mainly because it's what fits in one of these expensive containers. And that remaining liter ended up being very well used. I had some frozen peaches this summer that I defrosted. I made a good vanilla cream base with a little sugar, eggs and this cream. I mixed the peaches, threw it in my Ninja Cream and it turned into an incredible ice cream. The next process I will do is cultivate this cream, which will give it this cultivated butter. And to do that, I'm using natural yogurt, which is very important that it is natural and also contains active, living cultures. That then cultivated or fermented this cream. I will mix some tablespoons of yogurt soup with the cream and leave it at room temperature for a few days to ferment and cultivate. Now that the cream is doing its job and cultivating for a few days, I can start working on my bread, which starts with my yeast. And this yeast is completely exhausted. It stayed for a few days at room temperature. So, you can see that he is desperately looking for more food to stay super active. So, I'll get a new container to make my yeast. I will put some tablespoons of this yeast used. And then I will mix a little flour and water until I get a cake dough consistency, like this. And then I'll let it activate and double in size. It should take a few hours. Now, I still have about a cup left over from this natural yeast, which is simply a sour and super fermented delight. So, in my house, this is rarely wasted. You know, when you take a step away from things and ... Yes, you have leftovers, so you can really ... The kimchi ages well. Yes, it ages. All right. So, after about 5 hours, my natural yeast is good and active and ready to bake bread. And since I'm really here to make a perfect bread, I'm going to grind some fresh flour. Now, do I always grind my own flour? Absolutely not. But I will say that if I have time and energy to do this, there is no comparison with the levels of flavor and freshness that you get when you use fresh milk flour. So, what I have here is 100% wholemeal flour, which can be baked this way, but the final product of the bread would be a little more granulated. It wouldn't grow so well. So, I like to go through a basic sieve, which removes a good part of the outer layer of the wheat grain, leaving a slightly softer and more refined flour. This whole wheat flour will make a very tasty bread and full of nutrients. But I usually don't cook just with this flour. As you can see, it's not easy to do. In addition, for me, it is very difficult to avoid that super fluffy crumb that, in fact, can only be obtained by adding a little of that ready-bought white flour. This is a more refined product. And the exact proportions that I am using for this fermented dough are here on this screen. Remember that I have years of experience in dealing with masses with high hydration. So, if you are a beginner in fermented dough, I suggest reducing your hydration levels by about 5 to 10%. Basically, use less water to make your dough a little easier to work with. So, my dough rested for about 20 minutes, which is when I can start stretching and folding. Now, again, as I built a long relationship with the handling and work of a more moist dough like this, I prefer to work my dough on a board without additional flour. Just a bench scraper and a little water to make my hands less sticky. In fact, in my fermented dough course, I teach both the method for beginners, which uses additional flour in this stage, and the advanced method without flour, as I am doing here. And in total, I will do about 3 to 4 folds with intervals of 20 minutes between them. But, in fact, there is no exact science for this. It's all a matter of feeling how the gluten is continuously developing with each fold you make, until it starts to get stronger and starts to keep its shape. Okay, it's a new day and, as I mentioned yesterday, yesterday, most of the heavy work was done. So, today it will be very simple. The first thing that is very exciting is that I can check how this milk cream is fermenting. And you can see that it is a little thick at the top. But just below that layer it is still very liquid and is starting to develop some spicy notes of fermentation. But it still needs time. After about 20 hours in the fridge, my dough doubled in size. But I'm not trusting the weather here. Temperature at home, the levels of activity of your yeast. All of these are variables that will completely change the way your dough grows at home. And that's why I love these Campro containers, because I can only trust the volume. When the dough doubles in volume, I know that the dough growth is ready and I'm ready to move on. First, I'm going to divide this dough in half and give a very rough modeling to start building the final shape of these breads. After 20 minutes of rest of this dough, it's time for the final modeling. And there are many methods and techniques to shape bread. I used to get very anxious just to see all these professionals preparing the bread so fast. And that's what really separates professionals from an amateur baker. It's just repetition. If you do this all day, it will naturally be very good at it. But as an amateur baker, even if I'm baking bread, let's say, once or twice a week. This is usually not enough practice to really perfect it. That's why, for me, I simplified this process. I only use a simple technique of drawing attention, which I can easily replicate. And the breads usually come out very good. And this is really the first time in this modeling process that I'm adding more flour to the dough. And I don't save on flour here. The last thing I want is to spend two days making bread just so it sticks to its fermentation basket and completely destroys its final bread. And then it's just because of the space of color. Automatically. Yes. So, we got to the third day and shit is happening. Today, my friends, it's baking day and making butter. So, the first thing I'm going to do is preheat the iron pan and check the fermentation of the cream. That's what I'm talking about. For me, it's been three days since it thickened completely. But, of course, this will depend on variables such as the ingredients you are using and the temperature of the environment. So, what I did here was transform this fresh milk cream into fresh milk cream. Now, remember that sour milk cream is a very similar product. I mean, it's called sour milk cream. But since I used a milk cream with a high fat content, I get a thicker and creamier fresh milk cream. First, a slightly thinner milk cream. But anyway, now we can make our fermented butter. I'm going to pour the fermented milk cream into my mixer and beat at high speed. After a few minutes, it will get a little fluffier and turn into a fermented fresh milk cream. And a few minutes later, you can start to see the cream getting a little more oily. That's when I'm going to slow down the mixer a little bit. And when it starts to get liquid, kind of coming out of the mixer, that's when you know the cream is about to break, which is what we really want in this case. Complete separation of the solids from the fat of the milk cream butter, which I will then strain. And fermented milk cream is one of my favorite products to have at hand. I use it to make sauces, all kinds of roasted products. But my favorite thing to do is fermented milk cream waffles. I usually make a lot of them at once because they freeze very well. And then you have these extremely delicious gourmet waffles, which are much easier to digest with all this fermentation involved. Now, this butter is not ready. I still have to wash all the residual milk cream. If you don't do this step and leave some of this milk cream behind, your butter will spoil much faster. We only need this pure butter fat. And I found out that the easiest way to do this is to simply pass the butter in cold water and mix it continuously with your hands, which slowly eliminates all the excess milk cream. And you know that this happened when the water in the bowl starts to become completely transparent. Now, the last thing I need to do is finish this butter with a little salt to season it and it is ready to be packed. And I like to make butter in large quantities because it is a more intensive process and freezes very well. So, I'm going to pack a little to eat fresh this week and I'll send some packages to the freezer during the winter. So, my bread has another 20 hours in the fridge for a cold fermentation. Now, you don't need to extend the fermentation process for so long. But the reason I like to do this cold fermentation and this cold fermentation in the fridge is because the yeast slows down at these lower temperatures. Which, of course, delays the growth of your bread. But there is still a lot of bacterial development that continues to thrive at colder temperatures. Which I think gives you a much more complex and dynamic flavor to your final bread. Heat One thing I learned about cooking over time and that is very classic for many chefs and home cooks is that things tend to simplify over time. When I started cooking, as I had less skills and had no idea how the quality of the ingredients really affected the food, I tended to add more things, thinking that more was better and that this would improve the experience. But, as I improved my skills and focused on the quality of the products, I learned to simplify. And it's amazing how something as simple as bread with butter can stay in any culinary experience.