Bought & Made

Eighty recipes for the things you normally buy, in eight chapters — butter churned in a jar, cheese made in an afternoon, the whole condiment door, nut butters and plant milks, the deli counter, crackers and cereal, ice cream and confectionery. Some of it is transformatively better made at home and some of it is simply not, and the last two pages say which rather than pretending all eighty are worth the trouble.

Recipes

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What's inside

01 10 recipes

Churn & Culture: the Dairy Shelf

All you need is a jar and somewhere warm.

02 10 recipes

Curd & Rennet: Cheese in an Afternoon

None of them aged, and all finished the same day.

03 10 recipes

The Condiment Door

Including the four mustards that are the same two ingredients.

04 10 recipes

Ground, Pressed & Milled

Built on a food processor and three minutes more patience.

05 10 recipes

The Deli Case & the Freezer Aisle

From the processed counter, not the cured larder.

06 10 recipes

Snacks, Crackers & the Cereal Box

Out of the aisle that is almost entirely packaging.

07 10 recipes

The Freezer and the Sweet Counter

A thermometer is the only real requirement.

08 10 recipes

Staples, Wraps & the Honest Verdict

The staples, then the reckoning and what to keep buying.

Sample recipe · page 7

Butter Churned in a Jar, and the Buttermilk

Ingredients

1 qt (950 ml) heavy cream, at 60°F (16°C)
1 tsp fine salt, or to taste
4 cups iced water, for washing, discarded

Method

Let the cream come to about 60°F. Straight from the fridge it takes twice as long; at room temperature the butter comes out greasy.
Fill the jar half full, lid on tight, and shake. It thickens to whipped cream at four minutes, stiffens, then suddenly sloshes again — that is the break, and it is unmistakable.
Strain. The liquid is real buttermilk, thin and tangy, and it is not what is sold under that name; keep it for pancakes and soda bread.
Knead the butter in iced water, pouring it off and replacing it, until the water runs clear. Every trace of buttermilk left in is what turns butter rancid in a week.
Work in the salt, press out the last water, and wrap. Two weeks refrigerated, three months frozen.

Page 7 of Bought & Made — Butter Churned in a Jar, and the Buttermilk recipe with dual metric weights and steps

Sixty-six of the eighty say how long it keepsThese are the things that sit in a fridge door for months when bought and a week when made. Each recipe gives its real keeping time, refrigerated or on the shelf, and says which — because a book that leaves that out is not telling you the most important difference.

Forty-nine print a temperatureCheese sets at a temperature, sugar reaches a stage, and chocolate tempers in a window three degrees wide. Where a number decides the outcome it is on the page, and where a thermometer is genuinely required the recipe says so rather than offering a cold-water test as an equal.

The last page tells you what not to makeEight recipes in this book are worth reading and skipping — ketchup among them, after three hours of reduction and five pounds of tomatoes. They are named, with the reason, on the final page. Nothing else on the shelf argues against itself and this one has to.