Articles by Barbara Harfmann

When making gravy or soups, processing ice cream, yogurt, or sour cream, creating the filling for a frozen dairy desser,t or adding texture to an analog/vegan cheese, hydrocolloids are essential thickening and gelling ingredients to help dairy processors attain the desired viscosity, mouthfeel and creaminess of a wide range of products.

Whenever a new year begins, most of us strive to make some resolutions such as going to the gym, drinking less (aka, Sober January), and stopping smoking. 

In a relatively new category, hybrid dairy, which combines both plant-based and animal-based ingredients into a single food, has yet to fully take off. Dairy processors started experimenting with hybrid dairy after seeing meat producers come out with blended meats.

There’s an old saying, “Everything is better with butter.” The richness of butter is a key ingredient in baking, pan-frying, and sautéing, and is perfect on top of a baked potato. Then there’s the spreadability of butter on toast and pancakes, and its usage in casseroles, pasta, and even butter pecan ice cream, where pecans are roasted in butter before being tossed into the frozen treat.

Featuring festive food, a robust cattle judging contest, educational seminars, career connections and a large exhibitor hall with more than 700 exhibitors showcasing cutting-edge technology and the latest dairy equipment, the 57th Annual World Dairy Expo (WDE), taking place Oct. 1-4 at the Alliant Energy Center in Madison, Wis., was buzzing with activity around the theme, “The Golden Age.”

The magnanimous cultured dairy category is like a clear-blue summer sky with resurging, in some cases, double-digit growth that is “eclipsing” much of the dairy industry.

Cheese processors’ cheese creations have performed well in recent years, rising at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 3.5% from 2018-2023 to barely a whisper of growth, at 0.5%, expected from 2023-2028 to reach $69.7 billion by 2028.

Circana reports that in U.S. multi-outlets and convenience stores for the 52 weeks ending Aug. 11, the overall milk category notched $19.6 billion in dollar sales at a slight 1.2% decrease over the prior year. In the “all other” refrigerated milk segment, however, it was near-perfect fall sunshine with 21.2% growth and $252 million in sales.

Queens and Staten Island merged with New York City. The Bronx Zoo opened. The inventor of basketball, Dr. James Naismith, was coaching Kansas University’s new basketball team. AND in 1899, Dairy Foods (via its predecessor Dairy Record) was established. 

From running the pasteurizer to pumping fresh milk to adding the all-important starter culture to putting the cheese in forms and pressing it down, Master Cheesemaker Tony Hook is hands-on when crafting 70 flavors of aged cheddars, blues and mixed milk cheeses that bear the name of Hook’s Cheese.