At the core of what we do at Pepe Saya Butter is make crème fraiche (soured cream). To make our crème fraiche we add a culture (lactobacillus) to the cream and then ferment it, for the pure reason of flavouring the fat in the cream. Once the cream matures, we churn it into Pepe Saya Cultured Butter.
This is why it is called cultured butter….
When you first open your butter it will have a tangy and creamy flavour. Over time the culture will develop, which enhances the flavour. Developing cultures will give the butter a cheesier taste and more pungent smell. This is a typical characteristic of cultured butter.
The butter we make is beurre de baratte (butter of the churn). It is batch churned from single origin cream, creating a natural and less processed product.
The churn is filled with 700 litres of crème fraiche (soured cream) per batch, which makes around 350kg of butter.
The cream is pasteurised before the culture is added. This means that when the culture is later added to the cream and it is them fermented, the cultures are still alive and active after churning- so your wheel of Pepe Saya Butter is alive and full of culture.
Store below 4ºC. Avoid water, air and light to keep it fresh for weeks. Make sure the butter always stays in the silver foil as it keeps the butter from oxidizing.
Pepe Saya Butter does not change for six weeks with storage at 4ºC. After six weeks there are small changes in the lipids, fatty acids and volatile compounds and these escalate by 14 weeks of storage. Oxidation leads to release of fatty acids from lipids and then cleavage of the fatty acids to produce hydrocarbons such as aldehydes, alcohols, and carboxylic acids. Particular fatty acids lead to particular hydrocarbons. Some of these have pungent aromas.
The above research was complete by Professor Melissa Fitzgerald, School of Agriculture and Food Sciences and University of Queensland
