Cheesy Whey Quick Bread

    A common question after a person makes cheese is what in the world do I do with my whey? I hate waste and when I made my cheese with raw milk, which can be kind of expensive, I couldn't bring myself to dumping all that whey!

    After some research and recipe reading I discovered you can just substitute milk, buttermilk, and even water for whey in almost any recipe! The effectiveness of your substitution partially depends on what kind of whey you have and how much the recipe depends on the water content. Whey is slightly less thick than buttermilk so keep that in mind if that is what you're replacing.

What is whey?

   

     Whey is the yellow-ish liquid that is leftover from fermenting or coagulating milk into cheese, yogurt, sour cream, keifer, and more! There are 2-3 types of whey depending on who you ask. The main two are sweet whey and acidic whey. Sweet whey comes from when you make cheese using something like rennet. This is what you use to make most hard cheeses. Acidic whey is made when you make something like yogurt, sour cream, or other softer types of fermented milk. Some people have a third category that includes cheeses fermented or coagulated using something like vinegar or lemon juice. This type of whey is most associated with acidic whey. 

    When you are using whey to make things keep the type of whey you have on hand in mind. Sweet whey is way easier to implement in your recipes without wrecking it while acidic gives more of a sourdough flavor. You can also make extra things like yogurt or ricotta using sweet whey where that won't work very well with acidic. When you make sour cream and similar things you often also add your salt or flavor before you extract the whey, making it extremely salty and borderline unusable. 

How I used it

    After all my research I concluded that the whey I had on hand was that type of in between acidic whey. I probably could've tried making ricotta with it but I was a little short on time and not quite brave enough to try, so I decided to try implementing it into the cheesy bread I was going to make with supper. 

    This recipe is super simple, super quick, and foolproof. There is no need to rise your dough or even use more dishes than one fork, one bowl, the bread pan, and measuring utensils of course. I like to start of mixing all of my dry ingredients to prevent baking powder pockets. Then I add my cheese and give another quick stir. Once all that is thoroughly combined I make a "bowl" in the middle of my dry ingredients and that is where I put all of my wet. I start by cracking the egg and carefully beating it. I make sure as little of the dry ingredients as possible mix into the egg as I beat it. Then I add the rest of the wet ingredients and I mix it all with my fork just until there are no more streaks of flour. The original recipe uses milk but I replaced it with fresh whey and I actually liked it better! 

    While I was throwing together the dough I preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. I sprayed the bread pan with nonstick spray and spooned all of my dough in. I then put some extra cheese on top of the bread to make a cheesy top crust while it baked. When the oven was hot I put the bread in for 49 minutes. I let the bread cool just enough to handle before I took the bread out of the pan and cut up for supper! We ate it as a side only topped in butter but this bread is fantastic with soup or gravy to sop up all the tasty goodness!

    Leave a comment with how this recipe worked for you! What else should I try whey in?