Butter’s come a long way since Marlon Brando first used it as a lubricant – just as cheese has come a long way since it was imported into Australia in tins.
We now have our first legally made unpasteurized cheese – known as C2 – available from Bruny Island Cheese. And for the first time the Australian Cheese Awards have recognised a really decent local cheese – Jindi Old Telegraph Road.
The long slow march of the cheesemakers is now paying off for us cheese nuts. And now the same is happening for butter in a few isolated spots across the country.
Up in Myrtleford Naomi Ingleton and her mum Bronwyn have brought the disused Butter Factory back to life and are now churning their own cultured butter with a churn found on a rubbish dump in Gippsland.
Cultured butter is common in Europe but not here, where cream is simply churned and made into butter either with or without added salt. Cultured butter is fermented and has much more interesting flavours.
Being an artisan product, it is much more expensive than the bricks you can by at Coles or Wollies. But there again it is infinately superior to those mass market products and available in smaller quantities.
I like this butter (called The Butter Factory butter) a lot and (against doctor’s orders) prefer the salted to the un.
If you want to see an artisan-made butter industry flourish then I’d suggest just trying this butter out and if you like it to tell your friends about it – like this post on Facebook perhaps (below).
It’s worth it and really important to support small producers like this. We have become used to paying too little for our food thanks to the marketing of Coles and Woolies (and don’t get me started on the $1 milk thing). We need to pay more and very soon will be paying a lot more.
Find this butter:
Melbourne
Key ingredients 171 Queens Pde – Clifton Hill
Pete-N-Rosies Deli – Prahran Market
Leaf – 111 – 113 Ormond rd, Elwood
Leo’s – Kew, Heidelberg, Hartwell
Maxi foods – Blackburn North
Passionfoods – South Melbourne
Bills Farm – Queen Victoria Market
Regional Vic
Forever Fresh – 178 Annesley St, Echuca
Goldfields Greengrocer – Beechworth
Larder Fromagerie – Beechworth
King Valley Fine Foods – 4/103 Murphy St, Wangaratta
Vegetation – Mt Beauty
Dare’s Fruit & Vegetables – Wodonga
Svarmisk – Mt Beauty
Torquay Larder – Torquay
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
I never knew there was varying qualities of butter until I buttered a baguette in a France. I’m looking forward to getting myself some of this and putting together a ham and butter sandwich.
God created bread for the sole purpose of making butter easy to eat.
Love a good butter Ed. Perhaps I’m not cultured enough to enjoy the unique falvour that cultured butter has as I find it too cheesy for may tastes.
Having said that I regularly churn my own fresh butter and always add salt to focus the flavour.
Anyone who disputes that cream is not fatty should churn 1L of cream to be amazed at how much butter can be left when released from the whey. Its amazing deep yellow colour just morphs out of the pale colour of the cream when seperated, its just devine.
hey ed,
is the butter you speak of unpasteurized? If so Im gonna head down to QVM and buy me some! =)
That’s quite an opening line.
Owen Wilson had a buttery moment with a librarian in You, Me & Dupree. Can’t say if it was that or Funky Cold Medina that did the trick.
You made the point about paying too little for food, but the prices I saw in an Epicure article put this butter firmly in the luxury market. We use Tatura, another local cultured butter at a fraction of the price. Maybe the Butter Factory version is 5 times better, but I would only ever buy it for a special occassion. Not sure if that will help to establish them.
The Grand Dairy Awards (Australian Cheese Awards in your article) awarded Jindi Old Telegraph Road Fire Engine Red the top gong. Have you tasted it? It’s another mass production, bland cheese. Nothing technically wrong with it, but absolutely nothing unique or interesting about it either. Not to mention that the producer is now the president of the Specialist Cheesemakers Association that campaigns strongly to maintain a ban on raw milk cheese. A farce.
As for Tatura, they make 70,000 tons of dairy products a year, a tiny fraction of which is butter, most of which is exported. Hardly fair to compare that to Naomi, and not something I would be interested in supporting.
Laurie, we support Tatura as a good reliable supplier of cultured butter, it’s our everday butter. If you choose to support Naomi, that’s great, but exactly what’s unfair about pointing out another local butter? There is no shame in a local company that can turn out a decent butter for a fair price, which also gives the more expensive imports a run for their money. The point I was making is that at about twice the price of imported butters, are the Butter Factory pricing themselves out of the market? Time will tell.
Hi Neil,
Yeah, I guess I came across a bit strong. My frustration is with the blurring of the industrial and artisanal worlds in Australia. They are simply different, and it is not comparing like with like. Unfortunately over-regualation & bureaocracy mean that here there is often little difference between products from small producers and large. Still seems harsh to compare fully automated industrial production to hand patted rolls of butter!
And no, I dont think they are pricing themselves out of the market – there is a large and growing market of consumers that want to know more about where the product comes from, who makes it, and why, and who are prepared to pay more to do so.
Not bloodyMAry, you’re right about butter in France. Sadly a lot of chefs use the imported stuff but let’s hope they start using local and then we’ll see improvements in what we can buy here.
Naomi, butter is easy to eat without bread too! LOL!
Rick,I’m pretty sure it’s pasteurized.
Neil, true it is expensive. I tend to bake with Tatura and I don’t use much butter so can afford one of these every month or so – I think I paid $8 or $9.
Laurie, I have been tasting the cheese and the one I had certainly wasn’t bland. My girlfriend started buying it at Vic Markets and my remarks at the time were that I was surprised how much the cheeses from Jindi had evolved. It was realy pretty good and I’m usually very negative about big locally produced cheeses. That’s why I think it’s a step forward.
It is frustrating that there s a blurring between artisinal and mass production worlds but I think when a mass producer does something goo they should also be encouraged. It all goes to help the education of the greater public’s palate and building a market for the artisans.
Hi Ed,
It’s glorious butter! But like you – I can’t bring myself to bake with it though I know Christy from Treehouse Sweets sometimes does.
Steve, the butter is worth trying even if you don’t like cultured butter. I don’t like the dutch cultured butter that is usually available here, it’s too sour for me. But the Myrtleford butter doesn’t taste like that – it’s more just a complex flavour rather than sour. I guess like all fermented things – the local bacteria make all the difference.
What I really found interesting about a new butter on the market (apart from the taste), is the wrapping. I now look out for local butter wrapped in foil paper – not that easy to get hold of. So much of the normal butter I buy is oxidised.
Hi,
Franck Beaurain makes so many contradictory comments about his cheesemaking its not funny. First he says the quality of the milk doesn’t matter, that its all about the cheesemaker. Then he says its all about milk seasonality. He says there is no difference in flavour between raw and pasteurised milk. He then says its all about affinage. In my opinion as a cheesemonger he continues to make derivative cheese that panders to the lowest common denominator rather than making truly unique and interesting cheese that we can really wave a flag about. Like I said, there is nothing technically wrong with it, so it will always win awards, but they have no length or depth of flavour, and excessively rely on butterfat for flavour. To me it says it all when they say ‘designed for food service’. They ‘process’ more than 1 million litres of milk a year – this is industrial production and you can taste it in the final product. I do take your point though that it is good for consumers to be exposed to a more diverse range of cheeses, and I know from tasting the Cabot cloth cheddar from the USA that big producers can make outstanding world class small batch cheese. Try some.
Rick – It would be highly illegal to make or sell unpasteurised butter in Australia. Keep an eye on the FSANZ website for the next announcement about the changes to the raw milk regulations. (Expected in May).
EssJay – you’re absolutely right – Pepe Saya even states on their website that butter can oxidise when in contact with light, yet they wrap their butter in see through waxed paper!?
Laurie
Hi Laurie
True his cheese are mainly lowest common denominator.
What’s more worrying is the Specialty Cheesmakers body says similar things – there is no terroir or seasonality to milk when it is bleedin’ obvious that there is. I can even taste the difference in yoghurt if it’s been raining.
Fancy doing a guest post on your top ten Australian cheeses?
(He is the president of ASCA)
Sure, if you’d like me to I would happily do that! (as long as I can post it on mine too!)
I think the last pres of the ASCA I spoke to was David Brown who was also a flat earter.
Yep, double posting is cool.