I am also a professional baker, for over 50 years, trained in France, now retired. It is my experience that most commercial heavy cream has a natural stabilizer already added unless you purchase high fat content cream from a private local organic dairy who probably wouldn't add anything. This is the best cream if you can find it. The easiest way for a home baker to stabilize whipping cream is to add a tsp of instant powdered milk for every cup of un-whipped cream. It melts into the cream easily and adds no flavor of any kind. I do agree that it is not necessary to stabilize cream if you are serving it within a couple of hours but if you need to keep it refrigerated for more than that or overnight, it is best to stabilize it. The reason to stabilize cream for whipping is to make it firmer and give it a longer shelf life. Because it is firmer It holds up better if you are using it as a filling for a cake, cake roll, pastry, etc. If you think you have over whipped your cream but not yet reached the butter stage, add 2-3 Tbls. unwhipped cream to your bowl and gently incorporate it into the over whipped cream. It will loosen the texture making it smooth again.

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