Butter

Imagine a lonely, weary factory worker walking home from his job in Africa about 9,000 years ago. He is thirsty, he is tired and his boss was an a-hole, again. He decides to take just a lil' nip before he gets home to take the edge off; kids have been sick, the wife has been nagging him about the new exhibit at Blombos Cave and there's a new speleothem in the kids' cavern that looks suspicious. He turns to his mule, Edin, and grabs his sheepskin canteen that has been moving back and forth during his journey, the milk sloshing with it. He grabs the pouch, anticipating the impending glorious moment; his thirst will be quenched, as only warm milk sitting in a dead animal's skin all day can. He cranes his neck upward, opens the pouch and instead of warm milk coating and soothing his parched throat, out comes beautiful nuggets of creamy golden goodness. Butter is born.

Or maybe not, but I like that story and it's definitely plausible. We can trace the use and manufacture of butter to the time of the agricultural revolution and the domestication of animals. Early attempts at butter were no doubt from goat and yak milk as those were the only animals Homo sapiens could manage for hundreds of years; I'm holding out hope that teenagers are next. There are still isolated communities in North Africa and the middle-east that make butter by hanging a large cream filled pouch from a tree branch and allowing the wind to provide agitation. Early butter also had mystical and spiritual qualities because it changed from a liquid to a solid. Archeologists have unearthed evidence proving that ancient Sumerians used butter to entice the fertility god, Inanna for a fruitful harvest. Additional findings further prove that Inanna suffered a bad burn to her cheek as a child and the use of the word "butter-face" entered our lexicon.

There was much disdain for butter in Italy because they already had olive oil and butter came from the barbarous Gauls. The romans did, however, use butter for a soothing salve and as base for make-up. As butter spread, it was also the impetus for the first student protest. In 1767, the students at Harvard University were given rancid butter. This forced Asa Dunbar (grandfather of Henry David Thoreau) to climb on a chair and declare “Behold, our butter stinketh!—Give us, therefore, butter that stinketh not.” And so began the antagonistic relationship between lunch ladies donned in hair nets and entitled snotty college kids; at least it's comforting to know that dorm food has always been suspect.

What does butter do anyway? Other than acting as the "bacon of the saturated fat" world because it makes everything taste better, it adds moisture, moistness and leavens dough. Butter is the solid result of uber-stirring cream. When a churner, let's call him Dave, churns cream, Dave the churner is separating the cream into its two components, solids (butter fat) and liquid (butter cream or buttermilk). The more you churn the cream, the more it will separate. The more separation-the more concentrated the butter fat becomes and the higher the butter fat content. In Europe the percentage of butter fat in butter usually starts at 83% and can as high as 87%; in North America it is more like 79-80%. "MoistNESS" comes from the fat in butter and "moistURE" comes from the liquids remaining in the churned product, known as "water". If the butter fat is too low, the resulting increased water in the butter will "weigh" down the dough and prevent a suitable rise. On the other hand, the higher the fat content of the butter, the more moistness the baked good will have without being overly wet. The water is not always the bad guy though. Water stimulates the proteins glutenin and the gliadin thereby creating gluten and giving the mass integrity.

When we go the store in the US we choose between unsalted butter or sweet cream butter. Despite its name, sweet cream butter is not sweet but it does contain salt. There is also the European cousin "cultured butter", which is made from slightly soured cream and is also salted. So which do I use for baking? We always, always, always, use unsalted butter. "Why do I use unsalted butter if I have add salt" is a common question. The answer is control; when manufacturers salt butter, they do it differently and in different amounts. Or maybe like the guy at Land-O-Lakes celebrated a little too hard after a Viking win and he misread the Sodium Hydro Intensity Tabulator...nope, can't take that risk. If a formula calls for 50 grams of salt, we add 50 grams, no more and no less.

Other than fat, liquid and salt, there is another aspect to butter of which we need to be mindful; temperature. Some formulas call for melted butter, some for softened butter and some for cold butter. What is up with that?

We use cold, cold butter to make pie crusts, croissant and puff pastry for eclairs, beef-wellingtons or delicate hand pies. Think about the layers (or "layas" as Mary Berry so elegantly says...she is like the Maggie Smith of the culinary world..I just adore her) of an eclair. The butter creates these layers while it leavens the dough. When we make Sfoglia (layers in Italian), Feuilliettee (flaky in French), or Puff Pastry (puff pastry in English) we make two elements.

The first is called the pastello and it is the result of mixing salt, water, and flour. If you over knead the pastello, it will develop more gluten and the result will be a tougher pastry, so refrain from the need to knead; you don't want dough like your ex, kneady. The second element is the panetto which is the butter and that's all it is; very cold block butter. We roll out the pastello (flour) and then we roll out the panetto (butter) so that is about 3/4 the size of the pastello. We place the panetto on top of the pastello and fold so it's like a butter sandwich. We then roll that out with a rolling pin, fold it some more, roll it out and fold more, etc. These folds trap the butter in-between the layers of dough, so that when we bake, the butter will melt, the liquid evaporates, resulting in steam that pushes the layers apart. The result is a flaky, delicate pastry.

OK, so why do we use butter at room temperature sometimes? Unlike the puff pastry we want to fully incorporate the butter into the other ingredients. For example when we cream softened butter with sugar, the sugar crystals cut a hole in the butter bringing air, which helps leaven the final product. The softened butter also coats the proteins and starches in the flour resulting in a more delicate crumb.

Last, we use melted butter for another purpose, to add flavor and moistness to the batter. Melted butter does nothing to help the structure or integrity of the product because all the liquids have evaporated. It does taste good and adding melted butter to cookie dough results in a luxurious mouthfeel.

Thanks for reading and I'll write soon.