Why Pastry Chefs Prefer High-Quality Butter

A professional bakery is faced with a number of factors to consider when choosing ingredients for its products. There is a need to balance quality and flavour, of course, but this also needs to be done with an eye on availability and cost-effectiveness. A bakery needs to choose the right butter, but also one that is available and affordable and hence can be guaranteed to deliver a consistent product which always looks, feels and tastes the same.

So here we have listed the key factors a bakery will look at when choosing the best butter.

• High fat content

When considering quality in terms of texture, taste and consistency, a high butterfat content is essential. This comes from French butters where the minimum fat content is 82%, compared to standard butters which are at 80%. This extra fat percentage is enough to deliver better lamination for light pastries, a more delicate crumb for cakes and cookies and a more intense flavour for all products. Higher fat content also means less water content, which prevents doughs becoming heavy and dense, and the resulting products being soggy. A high fat content butter will also maintain stability for longer, allowing chefs to work it better before it melts into a dough. If a butter melts too quickly it is harder to achieve a perfect dough, and certainly to produce the delicate separation you need for croissants, for example.

• Unsalted butter

Most professional chefs in a bakery would use a high-quality unsalted butter. This is because it affords you more control over flavour. You can be more precise over what you are producing because you can more closely monitor salt levels, and therefore can carefully add what you need to hit the right flavour profile.

• Cultured

Cultured butter is fermented and results in a stronger, tangier taste. This is ideal for premium pastries which need to stand out and deliver a distinct flavour. Uncultured butters are still widely used, but often for milder products where another strong ingredient is introduced to elevate the taste profile, such as fruit or chocolate.

• Sustainable

Bakeries have a responsibility to trace their delivery route and to understand where products come from. Most French butters are made in co-operative farms using traditional techniques steeped in history and community, and where animals are treated well.

• Cost

A bakery will be sourcing high volumes of butter annually and therefore has to monitor and evaluate costs in line with their budgets. This also needs to be balanced against texture, flavour and availability. A professional chef builds their reputation on delivering the same standard of product every time, so consistency and availability are key to that. It is possible to harness all these factors in premium quality butters from a reliable source.

Check out our story at Douceur de France and our range of high-quality butters for your bakery.