On Saturday July 20, as part of the Library’s Fun Food Week, the Children’s Room hosted LOAFING AROUND, a celebration of bread around the world.  We share stories, tasted different types of bread, and even made our own butter in a glass jar.

To make your own butter you need:
A jar with a lid & heavy whipping cream.
Creamandjar

That’s it!

Place a bit of heavy cream in the jar.  Make sure the lid is on tight!  To avoid spills in the library, we placed our jars in sandwich baggies.
jars

Then SHAKE! SHAKE! SHAKE!
How long it takes to turn into butter will depend on how large the jar is, how much cream you put in, and how hard you shake it.  Ours took about 3-7 minutes.

shaking2  shaking4
shaking5
shaking

You may want to check your mixture every now and then to see what is happening.  After the first bit of shaking the cream will turn into whipped cream.

checking butter    checking butter2

If you keep shaking past the whipped cream it will turn into butter and a separate liquid – buttermilk.  You can see this in the photo below.

finished butter

Separate the butter from the buttermilk — we used cheesecloth over a bucket for this step.

buttermilk  draining2  draining

Then take your favorite bread and spread the butter on!  We used (clockwise from top) French bread, lavash, challah, Irish soda bread, pumpernickel and tortilla.
breads

ENJOY!
eating2 eating3 eating eating4

And if you want to read something while you enjoy your homemade treat, why not try these books about bread?  To find any of these items in our catalog, just click on the book cover.