Butter and Fat Choices for Baking

[Shel_B]

I rarely bake, and when I do it's usually for simple things like quick breads, corn muffins and cornbread, brownies, and dessert loaves, like a pound cake, or popovers and similar items.  Once in a while I'll bake some cookies.

 

These recipes pretty much all call for butter, but none of the recipes I've used or come across specify the fat content of the butter.  Euro-style butters generally have a greater fat content that stateside spreads.

 

For the type of baking I do, does the fat content of the butter play much of a role?  I'm guessing it doesn't, especially in the quantities used for such baked goods, but I'd rather not guess and get some facts or experiences from the bakers here.

 

Also, should I assume that if a recipe is from the US (or Canada, Latin America) the butter that's called for is the lower fat, US-style butter, and if a European recipe it's automatically the higher fat content butter?

 

In what baking situations is the fat content of butter most important?  For example, how about brioche or croissants, or biscuits, or when making popovers?  Might there be a noticeable difference in the results depending on the butter used?

 

Tangentially, would switching fats from butter to, for example, lard, require any change in the quantity of the fat?

[AAQuesada]

For me anytime I'm going to / want to really taste the butter I try to get a good cultured butter, around here Frentel is the best flavor / price before you start to get diminishing returns. Extra fat helps when you are doing anything rolled out from pie dough to croissants. I like good French butter in Chocolate chip cookies and Brioche not necessarily for the extra fat but for the better butter flavor. 

 

Vermont Creamery is a good one as well especially if you can get the 86% 1 lb butter roll. If you switch to solid fat like lard depending on the recipe you might want to add 18-20% of the butter weight in water so you don't throw off the hydration of the recipe. 

[Katie Meadow]

@Shel_B I save my high fat European butter for fresh bread or buttering toast or crackers. When I bake I just use regular butter. It's cheaper, considering how much butter goes into some bakes, and It has NEVER occurred to me when eating one of my quick breads or cakes: "Oh if only I'd used Irish butter!" Well, maybe if I was making shortbread I would splurge with high fat butter, bur for simple snacking cakes or muffins, no. 

[Shel_B]

41 minutes ago, Katie Meadow said:

@Shel_B I save my high fat European butter for fresh bread or buttering toast or crackers. When I bake I just use regular butter. It's cheaper, considering how much butter goes into some bakes, and It has NEVER occurred to me when eating one of my quick breads or cakes: "Oh if only I'd used Irish butter!" Well, maybe if I was making shortbread I would splurge with high fat butter, bur for simple snacking cakes or muffins, no. 

There's a salted French butter that I sometimes treat myself to ... wonderful on a fresh Acme or Semifreddi baguette.

 

 

Thanks for your comment on baking butter. Helpful.

Edited May 5, 2024 by Shel_B
Additional information (log)

[Shel_B]

1 hour ago, AAQuesada said:

Vermont Creamery is a good one as well especially if you can get the 86% 1 lb butter roll. If you switch to solid fat like lard depending on the recipe you might want to add 18-20% of the butter weight in water so you don't throw off the hydration of the recipe. 

Good point. Hadn't thought of that.  Wouldn't the same hold true when using an oil?

[Alex]

3 hours ago, Shel_B said:

For the type of baking I do, does the fat content of the butter play much of a role?  I'm guessing it doesn't, especially in the quantities used for such baked goods

 

We're generally looking at a range only between 80% and, at the most, 85%, so that'd be my guess, too. For my most-baked sweet, gluten-free chocolate brownies, I haven't noticed any difference between Challenge, Kerrygold, and Plugra.

[Dave the Cook]

2 hours ago, Shel_B said:

Euro-style butters generally have a greater fat content that stateside spreads.

 

That's true. But how much greater, and does it matter in the finished good? US butter is about 80% butterfat, about 18% water and 2% milk solids and the like. Taking that 18%, we can calculate the water content (0.18 x 16 = 2.88 oz). That's not quite 5 tablespoons.

 

Taking the European percentages (I couldn't nail down the 86% Vermont that @AAQuesada references; the highest I could find was highest I could find was Organic Valley Special Edition, at 84%. Using the same arithmetic (and subtracting 2% milk solids), we get 2.24 ounces, or 4-1/4 tablespoons.  So the difference between the two butters is about 3 tablespoons in a pound of butter. I don't do much baking, except for cookies, but that doesn't strike me as a big deal.

 

Checking a few recipes, I found in most cases  (the exception being brownies, which have almost no added moisture) the water content of the butter wasn't significant, when placed in context with the rest of the liquid in the recipe.  Here's, roughly, the water content of a few:

• pound cake 8 T milk, 1 T brandy, 1 t vanilla, 3T from egg whites, 2-1/2 T from 1/2# butter (7% of total water from US butter; 6% had it been Euro)
• banana bread 1 t vanilla, 18 T banana, 3/4 T honey, 1-1/4 T from 1/4 # butter (11%; 9-1/2%)
• cornbread 20 T milk, 1 T from egg, 1-1/4 T from 1/4 # butter (12%; 10-1/3%)
• popovers 16 T milk, 2 T from eggs, 1T from 1-1/2 T butter (18%; 15-1/2%)

So if you needed proof for your assertion "I'm guessing it doesn't, especially in the quantities used for such baked goods,"  there it is. Even at the widest margin, European-style butter contributed only 2-1/2% more butterfat. As for flavor, the recipe authors seemed to claim that the biggest difference was between using butter and not (using instead vegetable oil, shortening, lard, etc.). There were assertions that the water content of butter was mechanically beneficial in some cases, but real proof was scarce.

 

What seemed to make big differences were 1) the form the butter took: straight from the fridge, room temp, melted, browned; 2) whether it was cultured or not. The first criteria will determine, in large part, the height, flexibility, puffiness and crispness of the finished product. The second criteria is simple a matter of taste -- you either like it or you don't. Or you like it in some case but not others.

[AlaMoi]

low water butters - ala Plugra, etc - are touted for flavor, etc.

 

for any dough that aims to be flaky or "puff pastry" . . . . that effect is attributed to water in the butter exploding into steam and 'making the puff' / creating the separation of laminated layers.

 

so - that raises the issue for baking . . . high water aka cheap 'American' butter = max steam explosion . . . .

or

centuries of bakers using high fat lower water butter.

 

curious, eh?

[Shel_B]

7 minutes ago, Dave the Cook said:

What seemed to make big differences were 1) the form the butter took: straight from the fridge, room temp, melted, browned; 2) whether it was cultured or not. 

So, what exactly is cultured butter and in what way is it different from regular, uncultured butter?

[pastrygirl]

1 hour ago, Shel_B said:

So, what exactly is cultured butter and in what way is it different from regular, uncultured butter?

 

Cultured with live bacteria like buttermilk, yogurt, and sour cream are.  Instead of churning cream straight into butter, they make creme fraiche first, then turn that into butter. 

Edited May 5, 2024 by pastrygirl (log)

[Dave the Cook]

1 hour ago, pastrygirl said:

Cultured with live bacteria like buttermilk, yogurt, and sour cream are. 

That is correct. In case it's not clear, the bacterial cultures are specific to each application.

1 hour ago, pastrygirl said:

Instead of churning cream straight into butter, they make creme fraiche first, then turn that into butter. 

I'd be interested in hearing more about this. From a manufacturing perspective, (to the extent that fluid milk is manufactured, and most of it is), it runs contrary to everything I thought I understood about the dairy industry.

[AAQuesada]

3 minutes ago, Dave the Cook said:

I'd be interested in hearing more about this. From a manufacturing perspective, (to the extent that fluid milk is manufactured, and most of it is), it runs contrary to everything I thought I understood about the dairy industry.

 

I think you wouldn't be surprised to find out most large American butter producers  don't like to do it because it slows things down unlike adding a couple % extra butterfat for a 'European' butter which is pretty trivial. Vermont Creamery started doing it the slow way back in 1998 so they didn't have to change anything. Thankfully cultured butter isn't as hard to find as it used to be!

 

https://www.vermontcreamery.com/collections/cultured-butter

 

86% Vermont Creamery butter (I used to see it retailed more but now it seems to be going more to restaurants) I can get it locally at Farmshop, if I ask because they use it in the bakery. 

 

https://www.murrayscheese.com/dp/vermont-creamery-lightly-salted-chef-roll

[blue_dolphin]

37 minutes ago, Dave the Cook said:

I'd be interested in hearing more about this. From a manufacturing perspective, (to the extent that fluid milk is manufactured, and most of it is), it runs contrary to everything I thought I understood about the dairy industry.

 

I'm thinking you wanted to know more detail than what Vermont Creamery includes in this little cartoon, but it's as @pastrygirl said:  pasteurize the fresh, fluid milk -> add live bacterial culture -> ferment -> churn into butter.

[Dave the Cook]

17 hours ago, blue_dolphin said:

 

I'm thinking you wanted to know more detail than what Vermont Creamery includes in this little cartoon, but it's as @pastrygirl said:  pasteurize the fresh, fluid milk -> add live bacterial culture -> ferment -> churn into butter.

 

Thanks @blue_dolphin, that is a cute cartoon, if a bit lacking in detail. My interest was piqued by @pastrygirl's assertion that the cream was made into crême fraiche before being made into butter. Is that really what happens? I imagine that making crëme fraiche and making butter are similar processes, especially in that culturing includes thickening and flavor development. But surely, the same bacteria aren't used for the two products?

[blue_dolphin]

4 minutes ago, Dave the Cook said:

 

Thanks @blue_dolphin, that is a cute cartoon, if a bit lacking in detail. My interest was piqued by @pastrygirl's assertion that the cream was made into crême fraiche before being made into butter. Is that really what happens? I imagine that making crëme fraiche and making butter are similar processes, especially in that culturing includes thickening and flavor development. But surely, the same bacteria aren't used for the two products?

 

I'd wager the mix of bacteria used are pretty similar, though probably not exact.   In both processes, they fractionate the cream from the skim milk prior to culturing the crème fraîche or future butter so they're working with a high fat substrate so it makes sense they'd have some similarities. Any commercial entity producing a fermented product at scale tends to keep their bacterial strains confidential.  Even if they deposit samples in a public biobank as part of a patent or trademark process, they're probably not the exact same cultures used in production.

 

I found these strains listed as being used to culture butter here:

Lactococcus lactis subsp. lactis
Lactococcus lactis subsp. cremoris
Lactococcus lactis subsp. lactis biovar. diacetylactis
Leuconostoc mesenteroides subsp. cremoris (Leuc. citrovorum)

 

The strains listed for crème fraîche production tend to be much the same crowd, although like here, where they list the first 3 strains above, they also say things like, "often others," and probably won't cough up the exact cocktail of bugs. 

[Dave the Cook]

All that makes sense to me; thanks, @blue_dolphin. I find the whole process, from 3.25% cow's milk to 83% butter on the refrigerator shelf, pretty interesting.

[Kerry Beal]

I use buttermilk culture for cultured butter as per New England Cheese Making supply Co  - here

[weinoo]

Back in cooking school, one of my first fun "experiments" was making crème fraîche; we made it simply, by adding a tablespoon or so of buttermilk to a cup of heavy cream, heating it gently, and letting it sit overnight. Simple yet pretty delicious.   Here's the page from the  course...

 

 

 

[donk79]

On 5/6/2024 at 8:22 PM, Kerry Beal said:

I use buttermilk culture for cultured butter as per New England Cheese Making supply Co  - here

And at one point in time I used a cheese culture for buttermilk!  I can't remember the details, but roughly I would say, whatever lacto culture you have handy, give it a try!

[Johntodd]

I ran out of butter and subbed cream cheese for it.  I used double the cream cheese and had to change the amount of water.

 

The rolls came out very nice.