We bought all the butters at the same time and immediately put them into self-sealing plastic bags. In making the pastry, there was little noticeable difference in the three brands of butter, although it appeared that the Straus butter blended into the dough quicker. The Cremerie Classique sauce had a slightly sharper flavor from the wine and vinegar reduction. One butter, Challenge, tasted so salty that we were sure it had been mislabeled as sweet butter. Branded as “France’s #1 Butter,” Président has a high fat content—and that’s why we’re … Butterfat ranged from the legal minimum of 80 percent to nearly 86 percent. -- 5. Horizon was $3.99 in November and $4.99 in December at Andronico's; at Safeway, Tillamook was $2.89 in November and $4.19 in December. Butterfat. The Cremerie Classique sauce had what looked like fine pepper sprinkled throughout and a light nutty butter flavor. The packaging on some sticks of unsalted butter boasts their contents have an 85% butterfat content. If you allow unpasteurized milk to stand, it separates into cream (mostly butterfat) and skim milk (mostly water). Maybe that extra two percent really pushed this butter from being good (like it’s honorable mention cousin) to great. European-Style Butter. -- 2. The Chronicle spent several weeks exploring 15 widely available brands of unsalted butter. Consumers can't even count on sell-by dates, since those are not required by law and and can be arbitrarily set by the manufacturer. A 2012 study published in the "Scandinavian Journal of Primary Health Care" reviewed the overall health of a group of middle-aged rural Swedes. Gerber Butterfat Content Determination Method. Here are the results: . The fat in butter is much more concentrated than it is in milk, averaging approximately 80 percent of the butter's weight. A Chronicle survey of prices in November and December showed vast differences between months and between stores. European butter contains about 82 percent butterfat, while ours tops out at 80 percent. We used the average of the two scores. The answer is butterfat. Sweet Cream Butter. It's like a sponge, and the longer it sits around in a grocery store the more flavors it picks up. Clarified butter is butter with the water and milk proteins removed, leaving a composition of 99-100% pure butterfat. Near perfection. It was so rich, in fact, that it masked all the other flavors. Lucerne surprised us with its mild dairy notes and fresh taste, which some described as almost floral. -- The Bottom Line: The flavor and aroma of Straus made it a clear winner. What Are the Benefits of Ingesting Coconut Oil? Beyond butterfat, there is another important distinction between American and Irish butters—the U.S. has a much stricter grading system than Ireland does when it comes to assessing butter. Other sources include butter or anhydrous milkfat. The distinctions between different kinds of milk and cream labels can be confusing. Plugra, in particular, suffered from this. Perhaps it’s that extra bit along with this butter’s perfect balance of cream and salt. New studies suggest that this might not be the case, however. Irish butter brands usually follow the European standard of producing butter with an 82% butterfat content, though there are variations. Milk fat and butter fat are therefore the same thing, varying only in their concentration. The high-fat Straus butter made a sauce that was thicker, deeper in color and decidedly buttery. Whipping cream can have between 30 and 35%, and heavy cream has at least 36%. Land O’Lakes European butter contains 82 percent, while American butters are only required to contain 80. It also tasted saltier and had a pronounced butter flavor. Vermont Cultured Salted Butter. This French standard, which involves simply melting butter until it browns, is making a comeback as a simple sauce for vegetables and fish. It is a simpler modification of the Babcock method with special butyrometers for various dairy products. Salted butter typically contains 1-2% salt by weight, or about a 1/4 teaspoon of salt per stick. Butter is almost entirely fat, as it is made by separating out the fat and then whipping it to encourage it to coalesce into a mass. Whole milk usually has around 3.5% butterfat. . Certainly, Plugra fresh from the Pennsylvania factory might have beaten our favorites in the taste test, but we wanted to compare the sort of butter available to shoppers off the grocer's shelf. When it comes to flavor, our panel discovered that how a butter is stored makes almost as much difference as how much flavor-giving butterfat it contains. From 2000 to 2014, the average annual producer protein price was higher than butterfat every year. Prices generally drop again in January. We used the butterfat and moisture levels, which are listed in an accompanying chart, to determine which butters to test in cooking. According to the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board, a single teaspoon of butter contains 4 grams of fat, of which 2.5 grams is saturated fat. Butterfat definition is - the natural fat of milk and chief constituent of butter consisting essentially of a mixture of glycerides (such as those derived from butyric, capric, caproic, and caprylic acids). The primary difference between grass-fed and regular butter is whether the cows used to produce the butter were allowed to graze on grass or were fed … The fat in milk naturally takes the shape of tiny spheres, or globules, because of tiny lipid molecules that adhere to fats at one end and repel water at the other. To see just how different the spread would be, I baked two batches of our Self-Rising Crunchy Sugar Cookies (one made with all butter, one with all shortening), for another shortening vs. butter in baking comparison. Although butterfat is typically 82% in Europe, in the US most butter is actually 80% (US dictated minimum). Many of the butters received low scores because they had off-flavors which we surmised they had picked up during transport or on the supermarket shelf. European-style butter is slow churned and cultured which creates a creamier texture with less moisture. -- The Bottom Line: Land O' Lakes makes the best beurre blanc. The people who run the Safeway dairy labs in Walnut Creek agreed to send our set of unlabeled butter samples to an independent lab they regularly contract with. The theory here is that the fat coats the tongue, canceling out the sharpness of the other ingredients in the sauce. The only marking on samples were numbers, and each butter was tested twice. Many researchers are now revisiting the earlier assumptions about dairy fat and its relationship to health concerns, in search of a better and more nuanced understanding of the mechanisms involved. But the lab results showed salt was less than .05 percent -- about the same as the other butters. And that’s what you get when you purchase unsalted butter or sweet cream butter, which is simply salted butter. But the labels for Straus Family Creamery (a Northern California dairy) at 85% butterfat and Vermont Creamery at 88% butterfat are also the same: both read 12 grams of fat and 110 calories per 1 T. serving. "Fat really absorbs moisture molecules quite well. Butter is a natural food made from milk, while margarine is a processed food made from chemically altered vegetable oils. Butterfat ranged from the legal minimum of 80 percent to nearly 86 percent. I live in Canada, where a breadth of butterfat options are available, but butters with butterfat ratios above 80 tend to be quite pricey. The remainder consists of … Butter fat testing using Gerber method is one of the many quality assurance test procedures carried out in milk. Market pressures also affect prices, industry executives say. -- The Bottom Line: Cremerie Classique had the best balance of rich butter flavor and performance. Butters … "It always has the best results." Because Straus butter is made from cows that graze and isn't ultra- pasteurized or cultured, it is particularly volatile. Other butters tasted included Clover Stornetta, Challenge, Horizon, Straus Family Creamery, Organic Valley, Tillamook, Luvpak Danish, Challenge European, Plugra and Beurre President. One butter executive advises buying butter in November when it is cheaper and freezing it. That high fat content makes it great tasting, but the vital statistics include 12 grams of fat , 8 of which are saturated fat, and 31 milligrams of cholesterol. Land O' Lakes butter is my go-to butter for baking," explained recipe developer Leah Klein of City Living Boston. In 2013, protein was almost double the price of butterfat, $3.30 per pound to $1.66 per pound. Grass-fed milk has a richer taste and is creamier, thus why Kerrygold butter has … These butters are not cultured, so expect a more neutral flavor. Each butter may have been exposed to any number of problems in shipping, storage, stock rotation or packaging, all of which can affect the delicate taste. The company started making the premium butter a couple of years ago at the urging of some French bakers. While that changes its quality slightly, the savings can sometimes be as much as $1 per pound. In a blind tasting, some of the expensive, high-fat butters Bay Area chefs swear by scored very low because they had slightly musty, off flavors probably picked up from store refrigeration. Therefore, sell-by dates wouldn't mean much. That extra 2% of butterfat … For a series of performance tests, we selected the butter with the highest fat content (Straus Family Creamery, at almost 86 percent), the butter with the lowest fat content and the highest water content (Land O' Lakes with 80 percent fat and almost 18 percent water) and our favorite table butter, Cremerie Classique (82 percent fat and about 16 percent moisture). This mild, sweet butter, made in Hayward, tastes fresh with a slight tang. Generations of health professionals have advised the public to limit their consumption of butter and other full-fat dairy products because saturated fat consumption had been associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease and obesity. The best source of butterfat in ice cream for high quality flavour and convenience is fresh sweet cream from fresh sweet milk. Butterfat, also called Milk Fat, natural fatty constituent of cows’ milk and the chief component of butter. Its butterfat content is 82%, which … Full-fat milk is usually homogenized at the dairy, a process that makes the fat globules so small they'll remain evenly dispersed throughout the milk and not separate, as they otherwise would. They all begin with whole milk, which consists of three components: water, milk solids, and butterfat. The Cremerie Classique cake was tender, but not quite as light as the Land O' Lakes cake. Modern cookbooks turn that around, referring to butter by its milk fat content. The Land O' Lakes crust was bland, but had a crisp flake and more height. Celles sur Belle. -- 1. This keeps them from pooling together like the oil in your vinaigrette, but they're still lighter than the watery whey and will tend to rise to the top of the milk. Although our favorite was Cremerie Classique, coming in at about 82 percent butterfat, the second place winners -- Lucerne and Land O' Lakes -- just met the U.S. Department of Agriculture standard of 80 percent. Cremerie Classique is made by Raven Creamery in Portland, OR, a small dairy employing just 11 people. That is probably because high-fat butter softens and melts faster. One of the advantages of multiple component pricing is: It provides clear pricing signals to dairy farmers in regards to the economic value of milk components. This rich butter is made in Ireland and has a pale yellow color, because it is made from grass-fed cow’s milk, free of antibiotics and hormones, with 82 percent butterfat. Butter is a dairy product made from milk or cream. Butter is a commodity, and wholesale prices are set largely through trading at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Where Does the Fat Come From in Instant Oatmeal? Others prefer the rich mouthfeel and flavor of high-fat butter, especially when it comes to croissants and puff pastry. The Straus sauce looked like coarse pepper had been sprinkled over it. Lower fat content means that the butter contains more water, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, especially for baking. Before that, butter is 16-17% water and 1-2% milk proteins (also known as milk solids). A 2013 meta-study published in the "European Journal of Nutrition" reviewed 16 earlier studies, with similar results. Scandinavian Journal of Primary Health Care: High Dairy Fat Intake Related to Less Central Obesity -- A Male Cohort Study With 12 Years' Follow-up, European Journal of Nutrition: The Relationship Between High-Fat Diary Consumption and Obesity, Cardiovascular and Metabolic Disease. 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