Fat is fat. I think most recipes call for butter because of the flavor.

Not really, amylou. Things baked with butter turn out differently than things baked with margarine, IME.

I never noticed a difference colleenoz but if you say so........I guess its better to follow a recipe as written especially when baking.

I agree with Colleen. hose light spreads aren't all fat - there's a lot of water in them and they don't taste the same and won't give you the same result.

Never say "never", and taste is soooooo subjective, but butter in cookies and baked goods is one place you really don't want "sorta like butter" products, and I agree with Colleen and as islay_corbel put it so well, "hose light spreads".

One year I was able to buy Plugra butter at Sam's Club. It was the best I'd ever used because of the higher butter fat content, but alas, they never carried it after that one holiday baking season. I recently blew a portion of my frugal food budget on Kerrygold Pure Irish Butter (also found at Sam's Club) and I'm in love all over again. Can't afford it on a regular basis, I'm sorry to say.

Otherwise, for everyday I use unsalted butter from Aldi. When I noticed the price of butter going up a month or two ago, I squeezed a few more pounds of butter into the freezer while it was $2.69. Shortly after that it went up to $3.49 at Aldi.

I occasionally use butter/coconut oil combination. Or use coconut oil when shortening is called for.

-Grainlady

When I was using fats in baking, I always used Plugra. Yes, I believe it does make a difference, and when I return to using butter it will be Plugra again. I have tasted margarine exactly three times in my life and I cannot stand it. I have tried "light butter" blends. Meh. Walmart in my tiny town carries Plugra. The more local, older, HEB does not. The HEB oowned flagship Central Market in Austin does carry it, along with many other European style butters, but the others are far more expensive than Plugra. A pound of Plugra is $3.99.

Amylou - fat is not fat. Oil, which is a polyunsaturated or monounsaturated fat is not the same as a saturated fat.

Look at what happens when you bake something like puff pastry. If you use butter, the fat is encased by the flour paste and when you bake, the moisture in the fat expands and blows apart the sheets of flour/water, making all those sheets.

If you use oil, it will soak into the flour and you won't get any lift. You'll just get an oily hunk of flour/water.

I'm not one to suggest that people follow recipes, like a quarter teaspoon of this and a half of that, because I don't think that's actually cooking. But there are huge differences between one kind of fat and another, in the way they behave, not to mention in the way they taste.

I love Challenge unsalted butter. Margarine is one molecule away from plastic.

Try making peanut brittle with margarine. It's more like peanut chewy-bendy.

FYI- All fats are a composition of the dietary fats - saturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated. The common fats we use in cooking are all a mixture of those.

Canola Oil - 6% Sat., 62% Mono., 32% Poly.
Olive Oil - 14% Sat., 77% Mono., 9% Poly.
Chicken Fat - 31% Sat., 47% Mono., 22% Poly.
Lard - 41% Sat., 47% Mono., 12% Poly.
Butter - 66% Sat., 30% Mono., 4% Poly.
Coconut Oil - 92% Sat., 6% Mono., 2% Poly.

There are also differences in the size of the fat crystal, the amount of water in the fat, as well as the smoking point, which also affects cooking and baking characteristics.

-Grainlady

The amount of water in the fat makes a difference in baking, too. There is a bit of water in butter, but not in shortening, and, I'm only guessing here, not in margarine. (?) I believe that brands such as Plugra, Kerrygold and the like have more fat and less water.

Kitchendetective mentioned Central Market, which is part of the HEB chain. They have a house brand of the higher fat butter, which is the same price as their lower fat organic butter.

What confuses me is the nutrition label. I was just comparing the Central Market European Style butter, which boasts 82% butterfat. When I look at the nutrition label, it says:

Total Fat 12 g ... 18%
Saturated Fat 7g ... 36%

That does not add up to 82%.

I have a box of normal butter from Target, and it doesn't even boast how much butterfat is in it. That's what got me to looking at the label to figure out how much butter fat it has compared to the "European style" butter.

Does anyone have an explanation for that?

Sally

Hmm, okay, I am stumped. What else does the nutrition label say?

It has the usual stuff that all nutrition labels have, such as protein, fiber, transfats (0%), sugars, cholesterol, calories, that kind of stuff. I was really only looking at the fat content.

Sally

Sally2 -

How about volume vs. weight vs. calories vs. daily value? Each would give you a different % of the total made up by butter fat.

In this case it isn't weight or the daily value%, the two you listed, but it could be by volume.

So, what did they say was one serving? Does the nutritional information refer to percentage of a daily caloric intake of 2,000 or 2,400 calories and these represent the percentages of the total recommended daily intake in their respective categories?

There's also margarine and margarine and margarine. Some is purely disgusting chemical bog nastiness. Others, while decidedly not tasting like butter, are quite acceptable on their own merits, and taste like the lightly salty solidified oils that they are.

Butter melts at mouth temperature and baking quality margarine (the stick kind that says 100 Calories per serving) melts at a higher point, so cookies baked with butter are said to have a richer, softer mouth feel. Margarine cookies are thought to be firmer and denser, and have a more floury, less greasy taste.

While it is possible to bake successfully with the butter/oil blends, they do not work in cookies without some adjustment. Liquid oil works in cakes, but really doesn't in cookies. It depends on how much oil there is. Oil makes for a lot of spreading and flatness (they aren't the same thing). Butter, itself, tends to spread because of its lower melt point (compared to baking quality margarine). And, as others have mentioned, the amount of water in ratio to solids in whatever you're using makes a big difference.

Unfortunately, it's been too many years since someone brought an oil butter blend to the baking for an event for me to remember if we figured out a good adjustment for it. For sure, I'd hold back some of the liquid (some eggwhite if that's all the liquid there is) until the dough was made, and see if it needs some more, rather than trying to fix a loose dough.

If you're making chewy cookies it'll work better, too. Those already require a drop of water. Getting crisp cookies with pure butter is easy. Not nearly as easy with any other kind of fat.

It doesn't have to be European, but the suggestions above are right, that if you can get a high quality butter with the highest butterfat content, you'll have the most success.

Great info, Plllog.

I've pulled the box of butter out again. A serving size is 1 Tbsp. Calories per serving 110. Calories from fat 110. Percent daily values are based on a 2000 calorie diet. It appears to be by weight, because they also give grams.

Does that clear anything up? I'm guessing the whole product is fat, and 82% of that fat is butterfat, and the rest of the numbers I listed on the earlier post are per the serving size, which I hadn't thought of before. Duh.

Sally

Margarine does indeed have water, see the wiki link

I'll post on butter separately, as I have a local link that although old, will be interesting.

Here is a link that might be useful: Margarine

There is a difference between US butter and European butter, just as a general rule. European high-end butter is cultured, giving it a richer, slightly fermented tang. US butter is not cultured although some mfgs are beginning to come out with their versions.

Kerrygold is not a cultured butter, it's meant for the US market. It's a very good butter and my DH likes it a lot. I do have an issue with the loose foil pkg, and that objection is noted by the linked article. Butter is HIGHLY absorbent of odors and the longer it sits around, the more likely it is to pick up off-odors on a grocery shelf.

Because this is from my local SF Bay Area paper, unless you live around here don't look for the Straus products. They're based in Sonoma and distribution is iffy outside CA. Very high-quality stuff; they still sell glass bottles of milk with the cream on top.

Article (to expand the graphic, click on the four-corner icon on the lower RH side):
"When Put to the Test, Here's How Butter Brands Stack Up"
San Francisco Chronicle, Dec 2000

(Excerpt) If you think all butters are pretty much the same, you would be wrong. Very wrong.

The Chronicle spent several weeks exploring 15 widely available brands of unsalted butter. We sent them to a laboratory for scientific analysis. We ate them plain and spread them on bread. We whisked them into beurre blanc and baked them into pound cake.

The differences in taste and performance amazed our team of tasters. Here are the results:

Here is a link that might be useful: Butter, butter, and more butter!

Sally, the standard serving of butter is 1 TBSP = 100 Calories, so it stands to reason that yours does indeed have more butterfat. By law, butter has to have at least 80% butterfat.

For comparison, my basic, standardized California organic pure butter (contents: cream, cultures) is serving size 14g, Calories 100, total fat 11g (sat. 7g). One can assume that most of the residual weight is water.

Cream from the same dairy (heavy whipping), for one TBSP (15 ml, which according to a conversion table, which says that a cup of heavy cream equals 240g, equals 15g. It's counter intuitive that it would weigh the same by volume as water, but any difference is disguised by rounding error): Calories 60, fat 6g (sat 4g).

The measurement of milk fat is to itself, by weight, and that's true in butter as well.

"Spreadable" butter, with oil in it, is designed to cost less. Butterfat, as a comodity, is fairly expensive. I read something about Ireland during the 1800's that you could tell the relative wealth of an ordinary family by how thickly the butter was spread. We plow through butter and sugar so blithely nowadays that we forget they used to be precious. There was a big butterfat shortage (equals higher price) some years back. It hurt premium ice cream makers, and saw more of these oil blends being sold. The rest is advertising. Ketchup sold in shatter proof, flat plastic bottles, that are lighter and easier to ship are "squeezable" and butter with air and oil whipped into it is "spreadable" (though people have been using butter bells and crocks for centuries to achieve the same effect on the counter with minimal spoilage).

Anyway, that's why the blends have the better price.

Interesting article, Jkom! We get Strauss fluid milk, but not the butter. The one I cited above when we cross posted was Clover Organic, which may be a different product than the one listed in the article, but could be similar in composition (they have very different packaging for "natural" and "organic"--we only see the organic). It's my favorite butter for baking.

As an aside, my favorite table butter used to be the cultured butter from Vermont Butter and Cheese company, but they've changed and it's pretty ordinary now. My current favorite is the seasonal Organic Valley (Wisconsin) Pasture butter, or their cultured butter.

My friend who gave me all the wonderful stuff from her farm, including cream from her cows.

I am making clotted cream with her cream. I think clotted cream is a kind of butter, which is more buttery than any butter.

May be I will look up some recipes using clotted cream.

dcarch

Recipes?!? Dcarch, make a cream tea! Make figurative scones with currant eyes and striped jam to serve with your clotted cream. No need to hide it in a recipe!

If you don't want to make the jam, you could sculpt some fruit paste. :) I like Rutherford and Meyer, which comes in bright, jammy colors, but this time of year you should be able to get fig paste anywhere. :)

The "lite" spreads and imitations don't work for real baking and cooking.

We always used Nucoa margarine for baking - no milk solids (it's Kosher) and good baking qualities. Or Crisco. Very seldom used actual butter.

If you want to use butter, check the recipe for salted or unsalted, and make sure the label says "BUTTER" because it has a legally required composition.

Here, we consider that it's what the cows eat that determines the taste of the butter!
Why is it hard to get goo butter your end?

Plllog, you're right. Dcarch - eat a cream tea!!! Plain scones. First strawberry jam, then clotted cream. That's how it's done in Cornwall.

IC, it's not hard to get good butter, here. It's hard to get good butter cheap! And, yes, that's why the pasture butter is so good (I buy it in season and freeze). It's all the grass the cows eat in the Summer! (I suggested scone animals and striped jam because Dcarch makes food art.)

Love the idea of striped jam. Never seen it!

hope I am not too late to this thread.. We ate the MOST amazing butter all Summer in France this year...oh my...cold packs wrapped in foil...it was so sweet and creamy...and then just chunks served on a plate..I don't care where or when it was all wonderful. Tonight we got a surprise in our local Kroger, Delitia. It is lovely...it is cultured so you have to allow for the " more " flavor in cultured butter. Not something you expect in USA. It melts on your tongue like a rich ice cream :) So good. We will be back in France all Summer next Summer too so will be on the look out now for the rest of the brands listed below. This is the best compendium of butter I have ever seen. c

Here is a link that might be useful: butter

Trailrunner, when you're in France, just look for the local butters. then you'll get the taste of the region as it will be butter made in a little farm from local milk. There is a ton of mass produced butter - good, but not in the same league as the little local producers.

Clotted cream, made from cream from my friend's farm.

dcarch

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What an interesting bowl!

So what did you use it with? Or did you just eat it with a spoon? :)

Thanks. I made the bowl with a coconut I ate. The base/leg is made from a bend fork.

I had the clotted cream on English muffins. Since clotted cream is English.

dcarch

* Wait! English muffin is not exactly English. :-)

* Wait! English muffin is not exactly English. :-)

Doesn't matter. The cream was given by an American cow!

islay we had local butter too...we were in so many tiny villages as we rode our bikes across Europe. Everything we put in our mouths was amazing in France...well except the one andouille LOL !! That has a notorious barnyard taste...ugh :) Will be on the look out for more great butter for sure.

We will be riding our bicycles from Roscoff down to San Sebastian ,Spain and then across to Provence via Toulouse and Montpellier and then the train back to Paris and home. Plan to spend at least 2 months.

What an amazing trip! I live 1 hour east from Roscoff - if you look on a map - Binic.

Wow..if we weren't on the fast train from Paris to Roscoff would be SO fun to meet you ! This past Summer we rode from Vienna Austria to Nantes, France primarily on the Velo 6. It was a great adventure. I have done long tours in the US but never in Europe and it was my DH's first tour . He is hooked now :) When we finished the trip in Nantes, on Bastille Day, we then took the train to Amsterdam and rode around Holland for 2 1/2 weeks. We visited 6 areas using the train and then cycled for 3-4 days in each area. We had lived there for a year in 1988 so it was great to visit again. We had perfect sunny weather every day but one.

Will let you know when we leave the US...will likely be September as we are thinking later is better. What do you think about the coast as far as many things being closed in Aug. ? I know that the French go on vacation then ....we want to visit several of the islands on our way down the coast. Would appreciate any tips for time of year that is best. It was still quite cool mid July in Nantes. Thank you islay. c

On the coast, everything is open in August - mid-July to mid-August is the main holiday month here. Everything is jumping. In-land, we go to get some peace and quiet! There are some fabulous islands to visit. I've never been to the Ile de Rez but my sister had a holiday there and loved it. They rented bikes and cycled everyhere as it's so flat. They have donkeys that wear trousers..... but I digress. If you have some time to spend in Brittany, then do. The coastline is fabulous and full of wonderful little towns and in-land it's still a place full of history and mysticism.
You must have great legs lol

Oh thank you for answering ! Yes that is one of the islands I have in mind. We will be camping as we carry everything on our bikes that we will need. I have a great article, it was on Yahoo, that is about 3 of the islands and what there is to do and the camping . Pants on donkeys ???!! Wow..what fun :) We are definitely planning on a long slow ride along the coast and are looking forward to Basque foods and wines. I want to get to Provence before the lavender is all done so need to start soon enough in Roscoff...

Guess we should have taken this off the butter topic :) THANK YOU !! Appreciate the suggestions and will post back when we get our act together. About the legs...well they are 64 now..and they have their good days . c

edited to say you have email from GW link.

This post was edited by trailrunner on Tue, Dec 16, 14 at 4:59