Better with Butter

This week, our local food came to us from the farm located across the street from us. All Grass Farms cultivates pasture raised meat, raw milk, and organic eggs. In addition to a well stocked farm store, they offer CSA boxes, farm tours, and a farm festival. 

I headed there to buy some butter for spreading. We use the typical grocery store butter – unsalted  – for baking and cooking, but we indulge in a higher quality (and salted) butter for spreading  – on English muffins, biscuits, and fresh baked bread.

We often purchase a particular Irish brand – which is delicious, but to satisfy this year’s challenge of eating more locally produced foods, I decided to see what All Grass had to offer.

I was hoping to find butter that they produce, but I think their raw milk is in such high demand that they don’t bother with the butter. In fact, on Monday morning a customer wrangling a multitude of containers sighed in frustration when she saw the “Sorry Milk Sold Out” sign.

I’ve heard that you have to get up pretty early if you are after their raw milk. We are oat milk people, so we have never tried.

Anyway, back to the butter. There were two offerings in the Farm Store – one cultured and from Wisconsin – the other organic and from Iowa. I chose the former largely because of the price and feeling like Wisconsin is a bit closer than Iowa, but I didn’t draw upon Google maps to confirm.

You may wonder, as we did, what is cultured butter?  It happens to be butter that has spent a gap year abroad traveling, and you know, finding itself. No, like its other dairy friend – yogurt – it is butter that has been treated with cultures and allowed to ferment. The result is a more flavorful and acidic butter. It has more tang. 

This cultured butter was handcrafted by the Nordic Creamery in Westby, Wisconsin, and it was delicious – especially at room temperature and spread upon freshly baked bread. 

I like it served just like that – butter on bread or sometimes with an extra shmeer of marmalade. 

Much like Paddington the Bear, I adore marmalade – in particular Dundee Marmalade, which I like to think (because of its name) is a local product, but in fact is definitely an import. Dundee Marmalade was reportedly invented by a Scottish grocer seeing the potential of Seville oranges that happened to be aboard a Spanish ship sheltering at Dundee’s port. 

In conclusion, homemade fresh bread, somewhat local cultured butter, and imported marmalade are an excellent way to spend a grey, winter Tuesday afternoon. I highly recommend it!

How do you like your butter? Room temp? Salted? Grass fed? Cultured?  With marmalade?

PS The bread recipe that Patrick used to make our freshly baked bread is a “No-Knead Bread” recipe from Mark Bittman who sourced it from Jim Lahey of Sullivan Street Bakery in New York City.