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I was reading about making butter at home and all the recipes called for raw (I presume this means unpasteurised) milk. Why is this?

They also said to wait for the cream to separate from the milk. I've never seen this happen - is there something about pasteurisation that stabilises the emulsion?

Brendan
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    I have accidentally made butter a few times, and I did it once intentionally. In each case, I started with pasteurized (probably ultra-pasteurized) cream. Separation (or not) has to do with homogenization, not pasteurization. – Jolenealaska Mar 14 '17 at 10:22
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    Yeah, you need *cream* to make butter. The raw milk is milk that hasn't had the cream separated from it yet-- that's what you're doing when you wait for it to separate. You then take the cream off the top of the milk and churn it to butter. You could start with regular store-bought cream, like @Jolenealaska mentioned above, and skip the waiting. – senschen Mar 14 '17 at 11:21

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You don't need raw milk (or more precisely, raw cream). I've made butter from cream many times, but never from unpasteurized cream -- I prefer locally sourced organic cream for reasons, but the actual butter-making process is exactly the same with a pint of store-bought.

If you are starting from milk rather than from cream, you will need to get non-homogenized (or unhomogenized) milk. Homogenization and pasteurization are separate processes (even though both are typically performed on milk): pasteurization uses heat to kill bacteria and other pathogens, while homogenization breaks up milk fat particles so they stay mixed into the milk instead of rising to the top.

If you want to buy pasteurized, non-homogenized milk to skim your own cream, it may be labeled as cream-top or creamline milk. Raw milk is both unpasteurized and non-homogenized, but I personally like the increased safety that comes with pasteurization.

Personal anecdote: I once bought cream-top milk to try to skim it for butter, and the amount of cream a half-gallon produced was about a tablespoon. For me, that wasn't nearly enough to justify the extra work -- my family doesn't drink nearly enough milk in a week to salvage the necessary cream for butter-making. I personally recommend skipping straight to cream :)

Erica
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    Well, as butter is somewhere around 95% fat and more and milk is usually around 3.5% fat, you can easily infer how much milk you need for one pound butter. :-) – John Hammond Mar 14 '17 at 12:32
  • @John : not so easy, unless you know what the density of the butter and milk are. Unless those percentages are by weight and not volume. (but then you'd still need to know the density of milk, as it's sold by volume). – Joe Mar 14 '17 at 13:53
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    Well, even allowing for some inaccuracy of the estimate, the amount of milk is still much more than I would ever want/need ;-) – Erica Mar 14 '17 at 13:54
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    (In many places, you _can't_ buy unpasteurized milk/cream. At least here in Ontario, it is [illegal to sell](https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2014/03/11/ontario_raw_milk_crusader_michael_schmidt_loses_conviction_appeal.html), so unless you own a cow, it's pretty hard to get your hands on raw milk.) –  Mar 14 '17 at 15:00
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    If you want more cream, you really want a different type of cow. The "standard" image of a dairy cow is black and white because that's the coloration of the Holstein breed, which gives lots and lots of milk, but very little cream: a perfect factory-farm milker. For richer milk, you want other breeds of cow, such as the Jersey. They can give milk that's pretty heavy in cream, around 10% of the total. – Mason Wheeler Mar 14 '17 at 15:19
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    @Joe Because it really matters whether you need 1.83 or 1.89 gal lqd of milk. – John Hammond Mar 14 '17 at 15:33
  • "pasteurized, non-homogenized milk [...] will likely be labeled as cream-top milk" That's surely dependent on where you live. For example, in the UK, milk with around 2% fat is invariably labelled as "semi-skimmed" but that term doesn't seem to exist in the US. – David Richerby Mar 14 '17 at 16:53
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    @DavidRicherby In the US there is "whole milk" (full fat), "2%" (semi skimmed, I guess), and "skim milk" -- all of which are homogenized. The "cream-top" is a sub-category related to processing rather than fat content -- regardless, I'll clarify that a bit :) – Erica Mar 14 '17 at 16:57
  • @Erica Sure -- I just mentioned "semi-skimmed" because it's a milk-related term that's widely used in one place that I'm fairly sure isn't used in another. I don't recall seeing the term "cream-top" in the UK but, on the other hand, the supermarkets don't sell any product that matches that description and I don't know what term people here do use for it. – David Richerby Mar 14 '17 at 17:01
  • Another personal anecdote: One time I opened a pack of cream and was surprised that half of it *was already* butter (it wasn't even over the best-before date). It somehow must have gotten shaken a lot. – Philipp Mar 14 '17 at 23:14
  • @Erik, nope, that won't work here. If you click through to that link: "In its ruling, the Appeal Court said Schmidt's method of allowing consumers to buy an ownership interest in a dairy cow was little more than a way to circumvent the rules." –  Mar 15 '17 at 19:06
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They also said to wait for the cream to separate from the milk. I've never seen this happen - is there something about pasteurisation that stabilises the emulsion?

No. When I was a child, we had pasteurized full-fat milk delivered in bottles to our doorstep, and there was always a separated layer of cream on the top. It's homogenization that prevents the cream from separating.

David Richerby
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If you overwhip cream, it will become butter, with a small amount of liquid (buttermilk?), you can use milk to whip up a foam for topping coffee, by plunging it in a coffee press repeatedly. I've heard skimmed milk is best for that.