Late summer? – time to butter up!
Ciao Formaggiastics! As you know – usually we talk cheese, but today we will actually talk some butter.
The history of butter as you might have guessed goes hand in hand with the history of cheese and it´s earliest traces date back to Mesopotamia and the Sumerians around 4.500 b.C.
But what is butter and how is it made?
Milk consists of approximately 87% water with the remaining 13% being proteins (~3-3,5%), sugars [(lactose) ~4,8-5,2%], some minerals and vitamins and of course our beloved fat, which depending on the animal breed ranges at approx. 3,4-4,4%.
Other than the sugars, which are in solution within the milk, the fat is in emulsion and can be separated from the milk to obtain cream out of which in the end the butter is made.
There are 3 ways how to turn milk into cream:
1) You let the milk sit for a certain period of time (approx. 20h) and patiently wait until the lighter fat molecules will rise to the top and bundle up to cream. This process takes longer and is also harder to handle since during the waiting time the milk´s acidity will change and bacterial processes are already in gear.
2) You separate fat and milk using a centrifuge. This way is not only the more modern way how to produce your cream, it is also faster and more effective. Moreover, the cream will have a higher fat percentage (about 34-44%) and will also not be acidified. Butter obtained from this method is called sweet butter.
3) The last option for cream production is basically the same as the second one, but this time you would use whey instead of whole milk. Naturally the cream you produce with this method has a much lower fat content.
Ok – now we know how we extract the cream from milk – but how do we turn cream into butter?
With the use of a butter churner or an industrial spinning machine the fat molecules are beaten as long as it takes for them to break open. This gives the fat the possibility to cling together, a process in which the molecules´ skin, water and milk proteins are enclosed in the fat and leave you with pure butter and a fat percentage of more than 80% in your hands.
Fun Fact: Not all the cream will be turned into a solid butter state, what is left in a liquid state is the so called butter-milk with a fat percentage of 1%.
Our butter as you can see is much yellower than the ones you usually find in the super market. This is because it is made from summer milk, from cows that are on pasture high up the mountains living on a herb & grass diet which transports carotenoids into the milk.
It is also very soft and creamy – also a summer butter thing. Due to the pasture feed the milk fat is of a softer and less saturated kind – hence the butter is also softer.
Despite the magnificent look this butter is also an immense taste buster which you can solidly find in mountain treasures like this.
Our specific butter by the way originates from the pastures of Monte Cenisio at about 2.300m above sea level, where Pustertaler cows happily graze all summer long. This area between Italy and France is well known for its divers vegetation and our buttery friend by Giovale formaggi mirrors the manifold flora in every little fatty molecule.
Gustav says when on a market, festival or in best case directly at a cheese maker.. always ask for the butter.
You will be surprised about the differences you will find!