Lewis Road Milk and Cream

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davidt4, Oct 21, 2:53am

kay141, Oct 21, 3:04am
I wonder what price it will be. The butter is priced out of the reach of most.

davidt4, Oct 21, 3:06am
I don't mind paying for top quality. Their butter is superb.

kay141, Oct 21, 3:09am
At $6.00 per 250g, as I said not for everyone. Way too expensive for most.

jaygee1962, Oct 21, 3:19am
That's great news. I love their butter and would rather pay what I pay for it and use all of it as opposed to throwing away some of the other brands because the stuff is rancid or just plain horrible.

davidt4, Oct 21, 3:46am
It's brilliant, isn't it. I use ordinary Mainland butter for frying things, and keep Lewis Rd as a condiment for dressing vegetables, boiled eggs, soups etc. I doubt that we'd get through one packet in a week so it hardly breaks the bank.

Have you tried their premium version? I thought it was good, but not spectacularly better than the everyday one. Maybe I'll lash out on another packet when there are new potatoes available.

kaddiew, Oct 21, 4:02am
I've been enjoying my own homegrown potatoes for the last 3 weeks. have resisted any butter so far, but might just have to indulge.

bedazzledjewels, Oct 21, 4:21am
That's good news DT4. I wonder if it's A2 milk as well?

vmax2, Oct 21, 4:30am
Pure bred jerseys produce A2 milk.

village.green, Oct 23, 5:15am
I see Whitestone are now making artisan type butter also. $5.99 for 250g

davidt4, Oct 23, 5:29am
The Whitestone butter is very good, perhaps with not quite so much "cultured" flavour. I've also tried the Whitestone smoked butter and found it too strong. I still haven't finished the block I bought when it first came out, and will probably use it up in something like Chili con Carne.

barbs77, Oct 23, 7:34pm
I am enjoying the smoked butter on asparagus and am going to make a herb butter from it to put on a BBQ steak. But it is quite strong. Love Lewis Rd butter, hope we can get the milk down here.
Would love to be able to give it to my 1 year old. Real milk.

griffo4, Oct 23, 9:00pm
is Lewis Road butter cultured butter or just the ordinary butter?

l will make some butter today from the cream off our raw milk, the herd we get it from has 6" cream on top of the billy and l hate to waste it
l was looking at making some cultured butter does anyone have any tips on how to please?

davidt4, Oct 23, 9:11pm
Lewis Rd is cultured butter, similar to French butter.

To make cultured butter you will need a starter culture. Commercially produced buttermilk has the right culture, so you could use that. Otherwise check with the various suppliers of cheesemaking ingredients, and see if they can supply s.lactis, s. cremoris, s. lactis biovar diacetylactis .

What you are aiming for is a lactic fermentation that will change your cream into crème fraîche. Then you churn the cream and make butter in the usual way.

griffo4, Oct 23, 11:57pm
David l bought cultured buttermilk yesterday

and l have Mad Millies yoghurt and yoghurt cheese culture thermophilic DVS culture

Have you got a recipe for making it please, how much culture and how to make it up to the churning stage?

bedazzledjewels, Oct 24, 12:08am
Thanks Vmax; I thought that was the case.

davidt4, Oct 24, 12:11am
Here's how I make Crème fraîche. Obviously you'll need to increase the quantity dramatically. I haven't made it into butter but I imagine you would follow the usual procedure of agitating the cream until the butter separates, washing the butter, pressing out the water, salting.

Crème fraîche:

500 ml plain cream
2 tablespoon buttermilk
In a medium saucepan over low heat, warm the cream to 40 degrees C. Remove from heat and stir in the buttermilk.
Transfer the cream to a large bowl and allow this mixture to stand in a warm place, loosely covered with plastic wrap, until thickened but still of pouring consistency.  Stir and taste every 6 - 8 hours.
This process takes anywhere from 24 to 36 hours, depending on your room temperature.  The creme fraiche is ready when it is thick with a slightly nutty sour taste.  
Chill cream, in the refrigerator, for several hours before using. Creme fraiche may be made and stored in the refrigerator for up to 10 days.

griffo4, Oct 24, 12:20am
Thanks David for that l love creme fraiche and l found a recipe for cultured buttermilk l will post below and see what you think l saw it in the paper a week or so back and then Wendyl Nissen put it on her page it was an article from Matthew Evans

l get enough cream to try both recipes

Cultured butter
Good butter, made fresh, has a luscious flavour not found in the commercial stuff. I've given my method for cultured butter, the style that traditionally isn't salted. You can make a salted butter by omitting the yoghurt and just whipping cream straight away, then adding salt after the butter has been washed.

1 cup (250ml) cream
1 tbsp natural, live yoghurt
Whisk the cream and yoghurt just enough to get the yoghurt evenly dispersed. Leave it on the bench, covered with plastic wrap, overnight. About 12 hours is good.

Chill, then whisk the cream (it's best done using a k-beater, not a whisk, on a freestanding mixer) until it goes past whipped cream to looking split. Keep beating, but possibly turn down the mixer, until the grainy bits start to clump and form solids. This process will take longer with cultured cream, than with fresh cream.

When the butter starts to clump together quite well, remove the beater and use a firm spatula or a wooden spoon to press the butter fat together - a pale, milky substance will come out; this is buttermilk.

Drain the buttermilk off (and use it to bake into scones or cake) and keep pressing the butter against the side of the bowl, turning it over and pressing out beads of buttermilk. It's important to have the bowl tilted at this point so the buttermilk can drain to one side. Keep tipping off this buttermilk and using the spatula to knead out more of it. When the butter looks pretty good and has stopped weeping buttermilk, add about two tablespoons of cold water to the bowl and keep folding and pressing the butter to wash out the remaining buttermilk. If you don't do this, the butter will start to go cheesy within a day or two of being made.

I wash the butter like this for about five minutes in three changes of water. Then press it well to dry, using a corner of absorbent paper to snaffle the last drops of water. Chill this butter a bit before trying to shape, or simply scrape into a sealable butter container. Fresh butter will need to be used quite soon or kept refrigerated. Try it on plain toast, homemade crumpets (seriously yum) or on banana bread.

jaygee1962, Oct 24, 12:23am
No I haven't tried their premium yet as I love their standard butter so much. Will be trying the premium when I get some new spuds though.

davidt4, Oct 24, 12:59am
Using yoghurt won't give the same flavour as the bacteria are different. I don't like the flavour of cream that has been cultured with yoghurt, but some people obviously do. If you've got lots of cream give it a try and let us know how it turns out!

I must say from some of her writing Wendyl Nissen doesn't seem to know much about food, so I wouldn't follow her advice blindly.

racecom, Oct 24, 1:00am
I have tried all the overseas imported butters virtually every brand of artisan butter available in NZ and found Lewis Road Creamery to be simply the best of the best. Their cream is going to be bloody marvellous if it is the same.
Highly recommended by Derek the Chef.

griffo4, Oct 24, 7:56am
David, l agree about Wendyl but it was Matthew Evan's who wrote that piece and me be a novice to this stuff thought it would be worth a try so l have got yoghurt and put it in the cream and it is sitting on the bench and will make it up tomorrow and if it is not right then l will go back to square one and start again and try to find the cultures you suggested

l learn alot doing it this way and thanks for your input, greatly appreciated

griffo4, Oct 24, 8:00am
l have another lot of cream so l will put the cultured buttermilk in that lot and do that as well and see how they compare

davidt4, Oct 24, 8:25am
I' m really interested to hear how it all tastes.

valentino, Oct 24, 10:01pm
Any other places where one can get the Lewis Road range.

Cheers