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When life gives you cream, make butter! A cottage cheese boom left Springfield Creamery with a surplus of cream, and so it decided to start making an organic European-style cultured butter
Springfield Creamery’s new butter line, which launched in Oregon last fall, is now available nationwide.
The creamery — known for yogurt, cottage cheese, cream cheese, kefir, and sour cream under the Nancy’s Probiotic Foods brand — launched Nancy’s organic European-style cultured butter just before Thanksgiving 2024. It comes sea-salted or unsalted.
Market of Choice was the first local retailer to carry the product. The butter, along with other Nancy’s products, is now available nationally at Whole Foods and other independent retailers and co-ops.
The company can thank the popularity of cottage cheese for success with its butter products.
Cream is a byproduct of cottage cheese production, explained Sheryl Kesey Thompson, co-owner of Springfield Creamery. Surging interest led to a 13.5% increase in cottage cheese sales nationwide from 2023 to 2024.
The company had been selling its excess cream to ice cream manufacturers but decided to use the cream to begin making butter.
Typical American butter has a minimum butterfat content of 80%, while European-style butter has a higher butterfat percentage, at least 82%. The unsalted Nancy’s butter features a butterfat content of 83%, while the sea-salted version clocks in at 82%.
The higher butterfat content results in a richer taste, creamier texture, and a deep yellow color.
“Bakers prefer it because of its lower water content and softer texture, which can make baked goods more soft and/or crusts more flakey,” Kesey Thompson said. “We have had more than one butter enthusiast tell us that Nancy’s butter tastes like real food, not (like) an oily spread.”
Nancy’s Organic Butter is made with organic milk from pasture-raised cows. To culture butter, bacteria is added to cream, in a similar process to making yogurt. The bacteria converts milk sugars into lactic acid before churning, Kesey Thompson explained. The process helps the fat separate from the liquid more easily, and creates a more complex taste. The culturing allows richer, more tangy flavors to develop through fermentation, and the slow-churning produces a thicker consistency.
While Nancy’s products are known for their probiotic characteristics, the company doesn’t make any probiotic claims for the butter, as the churning process doesn’t guarantee that the bacterial cultures remain active.
The butter launch has exceeded expectations, Kesey Thompson said. She has been hearing positive feedback from customers who are using it in their baking, on their pancakes or on toasted bread. During the development process for the butter, the Kesey and Kesey Thompson families were constantly eating butter.
“We go through more butter than anyone we know,” she said.
Kesey Thompson said her parents, Chuck and Sue Kesey, who founded Springfield Creamery, are no longer involved in the creamery’s day-to-day operations, but they live close to the creamery, and she often visits with them.
“I go back and forth there a couple times a day, and I was just there this morning putting butter on French toast,” she said. “I’m constantly putting butter on something at their house. When we were doing the R&D, my dad was very protective of it. Somebody would come over, and I would say, ‘You should let them taste the butter,’ and my dad would say, ‘No, I’m keeping that butter!’”
