Category: Pastry

How is butter made?

On a microscopic level, butter is fascinating stuff. It’s been called an “inside out” emulsion since it starts out as dispersion of fat globules in a continuous phase of water (cream) and ends up as a dispersion of water droplets in a continuous phase of fat (butter). Pretty funny, eh?

I said pretty funny, eh???

(Sound of crickets chirping.)

Ehem. So how does this miracle happen? Well it all starts with preparing the cream. The first thing that happens is it’s pasteurized, i.e. heated to 185 or so degrees Fahrenheit. After that the cream is slowly cooled to about 40, at which point something very interesting happens: fat crystals start to form in the mixture. This is an important step for the ultimate texture of the butter, which depends on a careful balance of fat crystals and “free” liquid fat. Too many crystals and the butter will be brittle, too few and the butter will leak liquid fat and be overly soft and “greasy.”

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How does seasonality affect butter?

That from reader Trish, and it’s an interesting question. I’m not up on the finer points of cow metabolism, however I do know that cows that are grazed on open pastures tend to give milk that makes soft butter. Something about what happens when polyunsaturated fats are processed into milk inside the cow…I’m hazy on […]

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Rain, rain, go away…

The operative word here in the Midwest has been rain. Storm clouds have frustrated my attempts at photography and moistened our basement, but if that’s all they do to us we’ll be lucky. The mighty Ohio is starting to creep inland. Flood wall closures are being shut and dams are being eyed suspiciously as the wet stuff keeps falling in sheets. Our neighborhood here in Louisville is called the Highlands, and as I explain to my young daughters, it’s because it sits on high lands. That means we’ll only be inconvenienced by the storms. But right now there are a lot of families who are are discovering what nature can do despite the best efforts of civil engineers. Say a prayer for them over the course of your busy day if you can.

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Is there a “best” butter for pastry?

Yes: firm. The best butters for making laminated pastry are firm for reasons that should be clear at this point: because they won’t melt into the dough as quickly or easily (during rolling and/or in the oven). And that means a flakier, higher-rising finished product. Certainly, firmness is a factor of temperature. However it’s also […]

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What distinguishes a “high quality” butter from regular butter?

OUTSTANDING question, reader Sarah. I thank you for it because it’s something every baker and/or shopper wonders. Just what makes this $18.99 per pound Beurre d’Échiré so much better than my local grocery’s generic $4.99 per pound butter? Is it that much better spread over toast?

As I mentioned below, I’m a big believer in quality butter, but I don’t like to get too nuts because you never know when something like last week’s Napoleon fiasco is going to happen to you. Nine or ten bucks a pound is about as high as I go. That to me is the price point at which you really notice a difference in a laminated dough. Much beyond that, you’re talking about points of distinction in flavor and aroma that are mostly lost on me.

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On Pâte Inversée

Whenever I post about making laminated dough I invariably get a few questions about Pierre Hermé’s mythical pâte feuilletée inversée (“inverse” puff pastry). I’ve blogged about this before, but let me just go on record once again as saying that while I admire Pierre Hermé greatly, I think the whole inverse puff pastry thing is a bunch of hooey. Inverse pastry is nothing more than an exaggeration of the tip that I outlined in the below, dressed up with an unnecessary process twist and presented as if it were the pastry equivalent of the moon landing. Bunkum, I say — and I reject it. Use a conventional laminated dough recipe, apply flour liberally to your butter pat and you’ll produce a dough that is both flakier and better performing (though admittedly lacking the caché).

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Pastry Anxiety

First let me say it’s good to back. Second let me say I have great sympathy for all of you who wrote in this week to protest that home-made laminated dough is too hard to make. So as my third thing let me say this: it’s time you manned up and went for it.

Homemade pastry-making isn’t a terribly difficult process to begin with, and it’s made significantly easier if you employ the critical tip of adding flour to your butter pat before you start to roll. That’s a step that even some of the best pastry books miss. And it’s an omission that I believe is responsible for the majority of laminated pastry failures. What does the added flour do? Quite simply it helps keep the butter more plastic while at the same time inhibiting melting. The result is a more forgiving dough that the novice pastry roller can take a bit more time with.

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Ta-ta for now…

It’s business trip time for your humble (ehem) host. I’ll return Thursday, when I’ll try those pesky Napoleons again. Grr…

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Where do Napoleons come from?

Naples, evidently, though no one is really sure. It was Antonin Carême who is said to have made that claim, but al we know for sure is that he said it was “ancient.” Whether that’s true or he was only trying to impress his dinner guests is a mystery. What’s true about the Napoleon is that its function was mainly decorative in Carême’s time, a finishing touch applied to the far end of the heaping tables that were characteristic of aristocratic dining. When did people start to appreciate them for what they are? Who knows? But its a testament to their deliciousness that they weren’t simply abandoned with all the rest of the fancy claptrap of the era. Oh, and if they weren’t called “Napoleons” then, what were they called? Mille-fueilles is the answer, essentially “thousand leaves” pastries.

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