On Making Butter

First I pour off all the cream into a quart jar.  I use unpasteurized, non-homogonized milk, which makes it pretty easy as the cream quickly rises to the top of the milk in the jug.  I then allow the cream to sit in the fridge for a day or so to create  hard separation between cream and milk, can you see the cream line about 1/3 up the jar?  This is the cream from 2 gallons of Tide Mill Organic Farm milk.

I then pour only the cream from my jar into my food processor and let it whir until it looks like this.  The Tide Mill cream takes about 8 minutes,when I use Jersey Milk from Olde Sow Creamery it takes more like 4 minutes and the separation of butter and buttermilk is a lot clearer.

I then strain the butter from the buttermilk, sometimes some butter floats around on the top of the buttermilk and I simply skim that off the top and restrain it.

Milky butter plopped into a wooden bowl. 

I then use a wooden spoon to slowly "knead" the butter, pouring off the buttermilk as I go.

I then save my buttermilk for pancakes, breads and such.  This is when I add a scant teaspoon of salt to the butter and rinse it with water, I knead a few more times til the liquid comes out, this liquid I just pour down the drain.  (If you want unsalted butter simply omit the salt.)

I then place my freshly made butter into a small crock and am happy.

(If you want to make cultured butter & buttermilk simply leave your cream out on the counter for 8 hours and do all the steps the same)