I stand corrected.

Making the many pronouncements that I do (what can I say, it’s my nature), I frequently forget the increasingly international readership of joepastry.com. Clair writes in from France (Normandy, no less) to correct me about butter:

In your buttermilk post, you say that “…butter isn’t made out of cream anymore. It’s made from leftovers from the cheese making process, by spinning bits of fat and protein out of whey via centrifuge.”

There must be some truth in this, but here in France, I can buy proper butter, made from full-fat milk, in every shop in every village. For instance, both the Beurre d’Isigny and the Beurre de Charente-Poitou are protected by an AOC, which guarantees that they are made using traditional methods and that using reconstituted cream, chilled or frozen, dyes or antioxidants and substances intended to reduce the acidity of milk or cream, for example, are strictly prohibited.

I don’t know how much you pay for “proper” butter in the US, but at today’s exchange rate, 250g/2 sticks of Beurre d’Isigny would cost me $2.60. Well worth it and I wouldn’t want a day without butter!

Yeah yeah, just keep rubbing it on in, why don’t you, Clair. What I should have said is that this is how most (though not all) American butter is made. It’s just tough to touch anything else for under $8.00 a pound. But I’m with you, Clair, a day without butter, well…it’s scarcely worth living.