Simple Dairy

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Two centuries ago ninety percent of the populous had to labor on farms, for the whole of civilization to eat.  Only one short century ago, feeding everyone still required the full time labor of half the people alive.

  Luckily today a  smaller percentage of farm workers is needed to feed the population.  Emancipated generations in today’s industrialized nations though, blithely give little thought of how or where their food is produced.  In their living memory fresh foodstuff has always been easily obtainable; and for a reasonable price.  This convenient condition might someday change.

_ Global population has doubled during the last 45 years. Presently more than 3 billion people are hungry and malnourished as it is. It is estimated that in just a few additional decades the present population will double yet again. Already the planet has practically no more fresh water or arable land to spare for increased agriculture.  Decreased grain production due to soil erosion and soil degradation is evident today.  The Chinese have reached or exceeded the limits of their agricultural system.  In large swaths of United States farmland the groundwater is being overdraft-ed (critical irrigation water is being sucked out of the earth much faster than it is being replaced).  Modern agricultural practice is unfortunately overdependent upon the availability of large quantities of oil and natural gas.  These fossil fuels are needed to produce pesticides and nitrate fertilizers, power water pumps, tractors, harvesters, trucks, trains and ships at sea.  Fossil fuels are running out.  Fuel shortages force higher energy prices, which therefore impact directly every aspect of modern agriculture.  Then there are potentially disastrous effects of climate change / global warming to consider.  All food / any food is destined to become a more precious commodity in the not too distant future.

  Milk is an almost a complete food but sometimes milk products might be seen by the jaded eye as being frivolous and expensive luxuries.  Apple or pumpkin pies can be consumed without toppings of ice cream or whipped cream.  You are not required to put cheese on your tacos or real butter on your muffins.  Life would not be the same however without these culinary amenities.  It can be humorous to hear a concerned climate activist asseverate that dairy cows are menacing our atmosphere by their production of excessive methane.  Some suggest that milk is superfluous food, or that dairy production is unnecessarily “carbon intensive” and is helping to destroy the planet.  For a better understanding then of the facts of life, this post investigates some of that which is encompassed by the word “dairy”.

 

Mammals

  Aside from having hair or fur, of possessing three middle ear bones or of being vertebrates with high order brains; female mammals are uniquely characterized biologically by having the unique ability to create milk from specialized mammary glands.  Infants from each and every different mammal species require the colostrum from their mother’s milk, to acquire antibodies critical for their immune system.  This first milk following birth is also abnormally concentrated with fats and proteins.  What is not immediately digested and absorbed will instead act as a mild laxative to flush bile from a newborn’s digestive tract.  Following a few days mammalian milk dilutes in concentration but will continue to transport to babies – generous vitamins, minerals, fats, proteins and essential amino acids.  For weeks or even years sometimes, mammal milk continues to feed the developing young until they are weaned.  It seems strangely parasitic for one species to steal the infant’s food of another species, yet we humans do that every day.

_  It is easy to understate the importance of milk as a food commodity.  Dairy products have become indispensable to modern diets and we often consume these products within processed foods without realizing it too.  Milk cows and even milk goats in their prime are walking, breathing, flatulent food factories.  Over the centuries dairy cows in particular have been selectively bread to produce abnormal amounts of milk.  They excel in processing the carbohydrates produced by plants; those sugars and starches which are ultimately the foundations for all higher foods.  Photosynthesis uses sunlight and plant chlorophyll to produce sugars or bigger carbohydrates; then the lactating herbivores eat that and drink water to create milk.

  Even one single good milking cow feeding and lactating on a homestead type farm, may produce so much milk in a day that the excess must be fed to pigs and chickens.  In one day a good cow in her prime can produce 38 liters (10 gallons) give or take.  Such cows are often milked three times in a day.  That level of production will taper off though by the end of the season and the cow will need to be re-inseminated (yearly).  Making cheese is the most efficacious way to preserve excess milk protein, butter the best way to store surplus milk butterfat. In earlier times more people appreciated these facts of course and therefore placed great value upon having a family milk cow. 

_  Milking by hand is slow and tedious. In large dairies milking machinery began replacing human milkers a century ago.  Most people today do not have the slightest inclination or land resources or time to personally deal with a family diary animal.  Maintaining a milk cow or even a milk goat or two is continual duty and a major responsibility.  These lactating mothers need to be pampered and attended to.  It is dangerous and painful for milk animals not to be milked regularly and might even cause them to develop mastitis (an udder infection).  Presently industrial dairy products are very affordable considering the logistics needed to make them available.  Amazingly however, because of economy or tradition or life style choice, a few hardy farmers and pseudo-farmers still choose to do their own personal milking.  These people then have the option of experimenting with their own butter, buttermilk, creams, cheeses and yogurts.

Contents of Milk

_  Raw milk can be physically divided into cream, curds & whey.  The fats in fresh raw milk are less dense than the other components and so rise to the surface where they can be skimmed off and collected as cream.  The cream can be agitated or churned into whipped cream or butter.  By acidifying milk, the main protein in milk (casein) can be coagulated into curds and separated from a translucent liquid plasma left behind called whey.   Separated curds, which contain the lion’s share of protein from cow’s milk, are turned into a thousand types of cheese.  For each mammalian species the ratio might differ but in cow’s milk, casein constitutes about 80% of the total protein and whey the other 20%.  In the past whey was usually thrown away or fed to pigs but nowadays whey plasma often has its remaining solids extracted and dried into a powder called whey protein.  Whey protein is actually a combination of four different proteins with fancy names and it’s used in many processed foods or in dietary supplements.

* Milk is an emulsified colloidal suspension (where microscopic insoluble solids are evenly mixed within another substance).  The butterfats in milk are triglycerides (the most common type of fat stored in the body, necessary in moderation and consisting of three molecules of fatty acid combined with a molecule of the alcohol glycerol).  The analogy of a whole raw egg floating in water is sometimes used to envision this floating fat molecule, which has a triple-layer bonded shell of protein, cholesterol and phospholipids.

Homogenization

  The butterfats or cream in raw or whole milk from a cow will annoyingly continue to separate out and float to the top of stored milk.  To stop this behavior homogenization was invented.  Homogenization is a merely a mechanical process wherein fat globules are broken down into pieces so small that they resist separation and remain in suspension.  Milk is forced through a tiny passage at high velocity.  Homogenization is beyond the purview of small farms and homesteads because of  the high pressures and expensive machinery required.  Homogenized milk has a smooth, even consistency and a longer shelf life.  In the U.S. there is no requirement to homogenize milk or label it as such, only a requirement to label non-homogenized milk.  Bottled milk on store shelves usually sports one of four different color coded labels for sweet milk (Skim milk– 0g fat, 1% milk– 2.5g fat, 2% milk– 5g fat and Whole milk– 8g fat).  In these examples, raw milk is skimmed, micro-filtered, pasteurized and homogenized; then afterwards butterfats are added back to the refined milk to meet the specified percentages.

* There is some speculation by experts that homogenization of milk could have some negative impacts on people’s health in the form of heart disease and arterial plaque buildup.

* The term “Whole Milk” in America and Australia means homogenized milk with an average of 3.5% fat content by weight but in Canada the term means an unhomogenized milk.

 * Goats milk does not need to be homogenized because the fat globules are much smaller than those of cow’s milk and therefore tend to stay in suspension.

 

Pasteurization

  Unfortunately, warm raw milk fresh from the animal is an excellent environment for unwanted pathogens to grow.  Around 1864 the famous French microbiologist Louis Pasteur determined that heating raw milk to a specific temperature would rid it of dangerous bacteria.  Effective pasteurization can be achieved by heating raw milk to the relatively low temperature of 145º F for a period of 30 minutes.  Quicker forms of pasteurization though might be employed in modern dairies, where the same results are accomplished by flash heating the milk for just a few seconds.  Brucellosis and tuberculosis are two infectious diseases that can be transported through the animal to raw milk and for which dairy animals are annually screened for by veterinary test, in the U.S.  Other bacteria potentially introduced after milking, that can be prevented by pasteurization include diphtheria, salmonella, listeria, staph (staphylococcus aureus), campylobacter, yersinia and E.coli.

Digestion

  Speaking of digestion, most human mammals quit drinking milk after maturity and therefore stop creating the enzyme lactase, which they needed originally as infants to process the milk sugar known as lactose.   Lactose (C12H22O11) is a disaccharide which with the help of the enzyme, is cleaved into the two simpler sugars galactose and glucose.  If someone is “lactose intolerant” then it means that they are not processing and absorbing the disaccharide as normal in the small intestines and that it is passing into the colon where bacteria work upon the sugar instead.  Causing gas, bloating, abdominal cramps, nausea or diarrhea.

*  Lactose can be found in a rare few flowers or tropical shrubs but mainly it is a cheap and plentiful dairy byproduct taken from whey after separating casein, when making cheese.  Lactose is a cheap sweeter that is also used as a bulking agent, often in flavorings to impart that buttery, cheesy, creamy taste and texture in foods.  Not as sweet as sucrose, lactose can still be employed in candies and baked confections to enhance flavor, color and crust browning.  In a “milk stout beer” lactose is used as a mild sweetener that remains behind because it is not consumed by the fermentation of beer yeast (saccharomyces cerevisiae) as regular sucrose would be.  Lactose can be found in margarine, cream liqueurs, instant soups, instant coffee, instant potatoes, granola bars, pancake mixes, crackers, breads, potato chips and cookies.  Lactose can also be found in many medications and in processed meats like sausages, hot dogs and bacon.

*  Ripened cheese has almost no lactose remaining because that disaccharide (of galactose & glucose) is converted into lactic acid during the ripening process.

 

Other milks

_  Theoretically any species of mammal can be milked if the female is lactating. Vampire bats probably haven’t been put to the test yet but some idle student of science might  get around to it.  Most mammal species are too wild or ornery to be milked, the milk too full of fat or protein to be palatable or most frequently, the amount of milk acquired too puny for the effort involved.  Certain species though like camels, horses, donkeys, sheep, yaks, water buffalo, reindeer and now even moose, are routinely milked.

– Moose milk is more of a novelty than a practicality.  The yield is very low, the lactation period short but the milk is rich in the dietary minerals aluminum, iron and selenium.

– Reindeer (Caribou in the West) milk is low in lactose but very high in fat.  No other lactating mammal could thrive and make milk at such harsh latitudes. Laplanders domesticated reindeer centuries ago but still have to struggle to extract milk from them.

– Yaks and water buffaloes are cousins of each other and of the domesticated cow.  Both produce high protein, high fat milks and exist in environments not successfully exploited by the cow.  The yak populates high altitudes in central Asia.  Water buffaloes generally inhabit the lower and warmer climates of India, China and Pakistan.  Authentic Italian mozzarella (mozzarella di bufala) is made from water buffalo milk, which is higher in milk solids and has a richer flavor than cow’s milk.

– Camel‘s can produce milk while living in almost impossibly hot and dry environments.  Milked for a thousand years by nomads like the Bedouins, the yield is low, fat and casein levels are low and until just recently it could not be turned into cheese.

– Horse and donkey milks are low in fat and low in protein.  Like the camel, their milk lacks kappa casein which means that it does not clot or curdle and is unsuitable for making cheese.  In Tibet or Mongolia locals might drink horse milk fresh or let it ferment into an alcoholic wine known as Kumiss.  Donkey milk is far from a novelty.  Cleopatra of ancient Egypt supposedly took baths in it.  Roman women later followed suit in anticipation of adding luster and youthfulness to their skin.  Bath products containing donkey milk can be purchased today on Amazon or E-bay.  Maternity wards of hospitals in the nineteenth century routinely used donkey milk for certain children that could not otherwise digest the beta-lactoglobulin from cow’s milk.

– Sheep‘s milk is twice as fatty as cows milk. It may not be very palatable to drink but many fine cheeses like Feta, Ricotta and Roquefort are made from it.

– Goats milk has less lactose than cow’s milk so some people may be able to digest it more easily.  Its proteins are more similar to human breast milk than cow’s milk and it has more calcium, magnesium, potassium, and Vitamin C.   A milk goat’s daily production might range from just a couple of cups to as much as a gallon (following kidding) and they might lactate for 9 months out of the year.

Products from milk

  Many of the foods we consume have diary products in them.  Lactose alone taken from whey protein finds its way into many processed foods.  Without being noticed sometimes, milk or the cream from milk can still contribute to delicious sauces, salad dressings, dips, pastries and confections.  Food products produced from milk include whey proteins and sugars, dry powdered milk and powdered whey, sour milk items, butter and cream products and finally cheeses.

  The butterfat content from average raw cow’s milk might range from 2% to 5% and goat’s milk might range from 3% to 6%.  The range fluctuates considerably according to the diet and breed of a particular animal. This raw milk may be pasteurized or filtered and sold as is, or taken and turned into fresh whole milk, extended shelf life milk (ESL), ultra-high temperature (UHT) or sterilized milk, condensed/evaporated milk (7.5 – 15% fat), lowfat milk (1.5 – 1.8 % fat), skimmed milk (0.1% fat) or dried into powdered milk.

Sour

  Some of those milks above can be taken and aged or soured with the help of enzymes from selected lactobacillus bacteria, into products like yogurt, buttermilk, kefir, cheese curd and quarg.  Quarg or quark is a Scandinavian or German, acid set cheese made without rennet.  It is made by warming naturally soured milk (milk that was acidified by mesophillic – lactic acid bacteria) until it curdles.  Yogurt is similar but is heated beforehand to denature the casein proteins to prevent their curdling, before a culture of thermophillic (enzymatic action at higher temperatures) bacteria is introduced.  Buttermilk is similar to yogurt in a way, and their cultures can be grown in the kitchen.

  Normal old fashioned buttermilk was the liquid left behind after cream was churned into butter.  This thin liquid was allowed to sit and ferment (from bacteria already present in the cream) for a time.  Alternatively faux or cultured buttermilk – which is the only kind you can buy in a store, is made from simple low-fat or non-fat milk and is then acidified by introducing selected bacteria.  Cultured buttermilk is usually a little heavier, a little more sour and more like yogurt than is old fashioned buttermilk.  Without owning a dairy animal, a person can still make cultured buttermilk or yogurt at home.  The general method is to heat milk up to denaturing temperature (180º F) and then add the appropriate starter culture of bacteria as the milk cools.  The “starter culture” can be acquired by online or specialty store purchase, or by using some purchased cultured buttermilk or yogurt themselves – so long as these are plain and pure and do not contain preservatives.

  Kefir is a SCOBY (Symbiotic Culture Of Bacteria and Yeast); a low wine made from fermented milk. Kumis or Ayrag is more specifically made from horse milk and is associated with Mongols and related  Turkic people who have never been too specific about the exact bacillus used to ferment the wine.  Horse milk won’t make cheese because it hasn’t enough casein to coagulate, but it has a high lactose sugar level. “Kefir” could be used to describe a beverage created by a dedicated starter SCOBY and “Kumis” could be used to describe a beverage created with the native lactobacillus from raw milk.

_ * Ayrag should not to be confused with Araq (or Arak) a distilled liquor which turns milky-white when water is added due to the essential oil anethole (see ouzo effect / anise-flavored liqueurs) or Arrack – another distilled, rum like spirit made from sugarcane or coconuts.

Cream and Butter

  Sheep and reindeer milk contains considerably more fat content per unit volume than a cow’s, but at a far less total volume per animal.  Even between milking breeds of cattle there is a large variance in butterfat output.  A Holstein for instance produces a large quantity of rather lean milk and is the breed of choice for many commercial dairies.  A smaller Jersey cow though makes a lot of butterfat and hence might be breed of choice for a family milk cow.

  As mentioned earlier commercial homogenization is intended solely for breaking up the butterfat globules so that they do not separate from the liquid and collect at the top.  If a farmer was to pasteurize his milk and then store it in a refrigerator, without homogenization a thick layer of cream would form at the top of the container in a matter of hours.  He would skim this cream off and save it in a smaller container.  Hours or days later another, thinner layer of cream / fat would form.  If allowed to go unused such chilled whole (not homogenized) milk would continue to yield cream for a week or more.  But that cream is valuable.  When enough is collected then the farmer or his significant other would likely then make something useful of it.  Sour cream, half & half, whipping cream and butter are all produced from milk butterfat.

  Sour cream is very similar to yogurt; one is fermented cream and the other is fermented milk.  The other products labeled as creams are distinguished mainly by their fat contents.  “Half and Half” contains 12 percent fat.  “Light cream” contains 20% fat, “Whipping cream” contains 35% fat and “Heavy cream” is 38% fat.  Whipped cream relies upon its high milkfat content to form and hold air pockets, which allow it to firm up or stand up the way it does.  This emulsion must be whisked, blended or agitated vigorously to make the fat molecules join.  Agitate whipping cream too long though and you end up with butter.  The high-fat creams do not curdle as easily as milk and so are preferable for use in hot soups and sauces.

  Agitation turns cream into butter.  Above are a couple of antique churns.  Churning butter was how many children entertained themselves before the advent of TV and computer games.  With the help of an electric blender or food processor, butter can easily be made at home from heavy cream (40% butterfat / 60% milk solids and water).  Once the butter appears it is strained away from the buttermilk, kneaded and rinsed.

  Homemade butter is generally harder and stiffer than the product one would buy at the grocery store. That’s because commercial butter makers dilute their butter with water – to the minimum legal fat content (which is 80% in the USA).  Sweet cream butter is simply butter made from fresh cream whereas cultured butter is made from cream that has been allowed to ripen for a couple of days beforehand.  Clarified butter has had almost all of its water and milk solids removed.  This clarification can be accomplished at home, in a saucepan over very low heat.  Once the source of unsalted butter is gently liquefied – the foamy milk solids (whey proteins) are skimmed from the top, the pure butterfat only ladled into another container while the heavier water (obscure/milky looking with casein proteins) is left behind. Gee is an Indian form of clarified butter which has been cooked a little harder and allowed to brown.

*_ Margarine is older than one might think.  It was invented by a French chemist at the behest of Napoleon III in 1869 – who was looking for a cheap butter substitute to feed the army and lower classes.  At first margarine was a water-in-fat emulsion using either lard (pig fat) or tallow (beef fat).  Later margarine was to be made with hydrogenated plant oils and was often called “oleomargarine”.  All margarine originally came as white until the 1880’s when margarine makers began dyeing the product with yellow food coloring.  In the U.S (specifically Wisconsin) dairymen in the 1880’s complained and were able to get legislation passed to prevent this coloring of fake butter.   The Great Depression and shortly following WWII (where real butter was rationed) saw the displacement of animal fats with almost entirely plant oils and the general wide spread acceptance of margarine as a food product.

 Today’s polyunsaturated margarine s are made primarily from emulsified vegetable fats.  This blog post wishes to avoid the saturated fat, unsaturated fat, trans fat and cholesterol arguments brought about when comparing margarine with butter.  Perhaps it is noteworthy in its own right that common houseflies won’t even land upon or  attempt to eat the margarine.

Cheese

  Raw milk spoils quickly.  Originally the purpose of cheese was simply to preserve the proteins from milk.  The process of cheese making primarily dehydrates the liquid.  To do this the milk is heated and rennet was added.  The enzymes in rennet cause the warm milk to curdle or turn semi-solid.  This is then strained and separated from the whey.  Then these gelatinized curds are pressed to squeeze out remaining moisture and allowed to ripen with age.

  The rennet that was predominately used in the past – came from the stomach of a newborn calf or other newborn ruminant (because this had the chymosin, lipase and pepsin enzymes necessary to chemically break down milk).  The stomach might have been dried or saved in a jar of brine solution.  Either a spoon of rennet brine solution or a fingernail sized amount of dried stomach – were adequate to treat a couple of gallons of milk and make it curdle.

Today most of the rennet used for commercially made cheese, comes from an artificial source known as FPC.  FPC (Fermentation Produced Chymosin) is usually made with the help of either the fungus mold Aspergillus niger or the yeast Kluyveromyces lactis (formerly Saccharomyces lactis).  It is possible however to cause milk to curdle with an acid, instead of rennet.  Cottage cheese and cream cheese are “acid set cheeses” meaning they use no rennet.  Instead vinegar, critic acid or lactic acid (itself taken from a another, but soured milk) were used to cause the milk to curdle.

_  A line in the sand will be drawn here.  Cheese itself is a fascinating but broad topic.  Cheese is fairly easy to make but potentially a complicated subject.  As with wine or beer or many other things: consistency and quality control might be difficult to master.  If anyone were interested in collecting and preserving food from dairy animals they would likely already be rural farmers or people seeking to live an alternative lifestyle.  There are many other questions that could be asked, on the topic of dairy.  The answers should more appropriately be printed in physical book form rather than as text view-able only in an Internet web format.

* What are the best milk cow and milk goat breeds?  What do dairy animals cost?  What are the productive lifespans of dairy animals?  What are the particular details of a dairy animal’s reproductive cycle, artificial insemination and vet testing requirements?  What is the optimum diet or ratio of water, grass, legume and grain? How important is the lactating mother’s exposure to sunlight?  Give more advice and pictorial information of milking by hand and of cheese making.