Saturday, May 5, 2012

A Food Blogger I am Not: Thoughts On Whey

Since the boys are heading to a wedding today while I head off to a ladies' tea party, I have a little bit of time to type.
Fancy that.

One recent endeavor of ours was cheese-making.
We attempted mozzarella cheese.
We didn't fail, but we didn't succeed perfectly.

One thing I didn't know about cheese-making is how many byproducts you get.

We made mozzarella (or a slightly soupier version because we overcooked it...)
The byproduct was whey.

From that whey, we made ricotta cheese (which turned out perfectly). The picture is dark because it's an aluminum bowl, so you'll just have to trust me.

There was also 8 cups of  whey from the ricotta leftover.
So yesterday had me googling the health benefits of whey and alternate uses for whey, which apparently are many.

Some people drink it in shakes or mixed with fruit juice and carbonated water.
I wasn't going there.

But... it did say you could replace any water in baking recipes, and you can enjoy all of the health benefits added into your normal cooking.

So I tried it.

I made smitten kitchen's pretzels with whey.  Yes.  These are the pretzels I eat all too often, maybe once a month.

I would love to say that they tasted fantastically different and that I'll never make them without whey again.  But that would be a lie.

They tasted absolutely the same.  The dough was enjoyably more pliable, and they baked a little bit darker (or was that just absentmindedness on my part?) but other than that there was absolutely no taste difference.

After that success, which I declared a health-food because of the whey in it, I decided to try an ACTUAL homemade loaf of bread made with whey instead of water or milk.

I know.

I haven't made an ACTUAL loaf of bread not involving my bread machine or the bread machine's dough cycle for over a year and a half.

Here is my food blogger attempt at a photo of the bread.
I have this theory that most food bloggers scream at their children to leave the room or just focus in really closely on their food products.

Because you wouldn't want to know that in real life the dog is sitting in the bay window salivating.


Or that the little boy is dancing around the kitchen apparently unsupervised because he has a flower pot on his head as a hat.
Mysterious food blogger perfection just doesn't happen around here unless I focus in really really closely on the food that I'm photographing.
Just saying is all.

I do still have a canister of the whey in my fridge for use next week sometime.  I have appropriately warned Michael that it is NOT lemonade and that he should take caution when drinking products on the right-hand side of the fridge. 

3 comments:

  1. Whey or otherwise, this food likes awesome!

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    Replies
    1. Looks, not likes. Leson learned: don't comment from your smart phone!

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  2. I'm a bit jealous of the pretzels. oh yummy yum yum. I've been making yogurt and If I strained it I'd get whey... but I don't, cause I have no oven and therefor no reason to bake with it. I'm bookmarking this just for the future when we DO have an oven. Those pretzels will be calling my name.

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