Monday 29 October 2012

Goat Milk - handle with care


LegatoGelato

              Smooth Taste…Island Pace

 
Handling with care

          Milk is a complicated product and it is a delicate product as well. At our dairy we are very careful when handling the milk and very clean to prevent any kind of contamination.

          Goat milk is different in a number of ways from cow milk. The fat molecules of goat milk are smaller than cow and are much more delicate. This is one of the reason goat milk is easier to digest but it also makes it more of a challenge to keep it intact and flavorful.

          A big difference between using store bought processed milk and using our homegrown milk is our milk is not altered or supplemented. What comes from the goats is what makes our awesome gelato.

 I don’t know how many of you realize but when the dairy sends its cow milk to the plant, it undergoes a huge amount of processing. The milk is received, chilled, stored, pasteurized, and then taken apart. The fat, solids, and proteins are extracted, and whatever else has value is removed. Then to make whole milk the components are recombined in the correct amounts.

          All of the commercial ice cream recipes use this principle to construct their ice cream. You take x amount of 18% milk fat plus y amount of milk solids and so much liquid milk at 3.5% fat level, add glucose and sugar, flavours/chemicals and then all those weird gums and beans… Not very appetizing to me. It might taste good but it’s not very wholesome.

          I really believe that for food to be healthy is has to be less processed and less abused. Every time you manipulate a foodstuff, you change or degrade it. We carefully handled our milk.

We use bucket milkers, no long plastic lines carrying the milk to a big tank. Our milk goes from the goat down a 6-inch tube to the stainless steel milk pail. When the pail is full, it is carefully poured & filtered into a 12 L white food grade bucket. Then the bucket is placed into a tank of water set at 1-4° C. From there we drive a load of buckets to the dairy processing plant, carefully poured into the pasteurizer, mixed with the fruits/flavours, heated, and gently pumped into new buckets. After chilling overnight, we pour the mix into the batch freezer and 15 minutes later, it is gelato.

          The most agitation the milk receives is in the batch freezer and it churns the milk & flavour mixture slower than a dryer rotates.

          Our milk will vary in its components throughout the year, following the natural cycles that change with the seasons. We will follow the seasons and offer flavours that fit and take advantage of the wonderful local fruits and flavours that are available on Vancouver Island.

          I can promise you that it will be smooth and luscious, and a real treat.

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