399: European Butter Is the Best Butter with David Lebovitz

0:28This episode is brought to you by Resi and American Express. Because French butter is higher in fat, it's 82 % minimum, whereas in America it's 80%. The higher fat makes the butter more pliable. You have fat which surrounds the crumb, and that's what makes French pastries much flakier. That's a place where French butter really shines.

0:52This is Taste. I'm your host, Matt Rodbard.

0:59Today in the show, I have such a great conversation with David Leibowitz, the cookbook author, the man with the substack, the baker extraordinaire. Our conversation is all about quality butter, particularly butter from Europe, why using the good stuff is essential. I hope you enjoy this conversation.

1:26David Leibowitz, welcome to This Is Taste. How are you doing? Matt, I'm doing great. It's great to talk to you, as always. And it's great to talk to you about a subject that I love. Actually, my favorite subject in the world, I think. Yeah, I love it, too. I think butter is foundational in all cooking, or a lot of cooking. Sorry, plant-based cooking, obviously not, but there are good plant-based butters. But we're here to talk about European butter, butter from France, butter from Europe. And I feel like right now, this is a moment when we have to think about quality with our products. And like when you're using products every day, you should think about using better quality products.

2:06Well, I think in the last few years, we've gone through a lot. There's been, you know, turbulent times, the best of times, the worst of times. And I think what I'm seeing, you know, because I'm in touch with a lot of people, because I have a newsletter and I'm on a lot of social media and so forth, is that people are really looking at products differently now, and they're scrutinizing them more, and they want better products, which is a great thing, because I think things like European butter from France is a very pure product. It's, of course, delicious, but it's also like a treat. It's something that's an affordable luxury.

2:43It might cost a few dollars more than the regular butter at the supermarket, it. But the experience is so fulfilling that once you start eating the butter, it's hard to go back to just regular supermarket butter. Oh, I mean, I fully agree. And particularly in baking, too, where butter plays such a prominent role in many recipes. I think baking is something that we don't we know we really need to use good butter. Right. Well, one thing about like an Italian friend of mine once said to me, olive oil is not just to keep things from sticking, it's a flavor. And butter is the same way. So pastries are, you know, when you see a baking recipe, often there's a lot of butter in it, you know, shortbreads, tart doughs, and so forth.

3:29And especially in France, you get out of the subway, the metro, and you can smell butter. It really is the terroir. It is the perfume of the city. Now, let me ask you, in Paris, You live in Paris and also you travel throughout France. What was your last close encounter with good European butter? You know, actually, it was interesting because this weekend we went to Brittany for a weekend vacation. And in Brittany, they're famous for their butter. They don't really eat a lot of unsalted butter. They love salted butter. And that's because they eat so much butter that traditionally they salted it to preserve it.

4:05And that was in the old days before refrigeration. And nowadays, there's this amazing salted butter in Brittany. We went to a creperie and they serve this salted butter with seaweed in it. You spread it over your crepes. It was super delicious. Just a wonderful taste. They don't skimp on the butter either. They spread it on lavishly. People like to use the word slather when they talk about butter. but it's true in Brittany, you know, they have these buttery pastries at the market like Queen Yaman, Gâteau Breton, which is like a giant shortbread. And that, you know, it's something I bought a big slab of this Gâteau Breton.

4:49It's a kind of like a pound cake shortbread hybrid in a way. And, you know, it's probably 50 % butter and they use really good butter and it's so delicious. So that was my last great encounter. I love that memory. And I like the seaweed butter. I mean, what a great way to, when you have premium butter in front of you to add like a nice flavor like that. What a great one. Let me get your earliest memory of butter. You know, what's interesting is I grew up sort of in the countryside and we used to have these little flowers called butter cups. And I remember if you held it under your chin and your chin shined yellow, that meant you loved butter.

5:26So of course, my chin was yellow. And so everyone's like, you love butter. So that stuck with me. So that was my first experience with butter. I love that story. I've always wanted to ask you this, and we've had many interviews, but this is the first time I'm going to ask you this. How do you taste butter? You know, tasting it on its own is really the best way to taste it. For a while, there was this trend of butter boards in America, and nobody really did those in France or so forth. But actually, you know, people kind of became a trend, and then it wasn't. But it's actually a great way to taste butter.

6:03If you're just, you know, when I was a baker professionally, we would taste butters and see which ones we like the best, you know, side by side, you know, just plain. You can put them on a piece of, you know, a saltine or something, but then you've got salt and you've got other things going on. When you're in culinary school, how are you being taught about butter? Like, are you being taught that butter is foundational? Are you being taught that butter doesn't matter? Because I want to get a sense of how we've progressed. The second sentence you just mentioned, it doesn't matter, doesn't exist in the baking bar, especially in France.

6:35I went to French pastry school, and we actually, you know, we learned about French butter, especially, you know, which everybody uses, and they have special butter. Because French butter is higher in fat, it's 82 % minimum, whereas in America, it's 80%. And it doesn't seem like a lot, but it actually is quite a bit. The higher fat makes the butter more pliable. It has less water in it. So when you bake with it, you don't have water kind of saturating the crumb. You have fat, which surrounds the crumb. And that's what makes French pastries much flakier. But even American things like apple pie, flaky doughs such as, you know, or crisp toppings, that flavor of really good butter, that's a place where French butter really shines.

7:21It's such a great point that you bring up because we as home bakers, we really put a lot of effort. We pick a recipe. We scour cookbooks. We go shopping. We buy this great produce. We go to our farmer's market and buy great produce. We bring all these ingredients in. But then when it comes to butter, we sometimes are just relying on what we have. And I think what you're saying is when you're making like a pie or even trying like laminated dough at home, I know like the price, it's higher price, but that's because it's premium. But like to me, you kind of have to invest in good European butter if you're going to do a baking project.

7:58European butter made in France is cultured usually. And that involves adding something like lactic acid to the butter and letting it sit for 24 hours, maybe, which costs a lot more. You know, people don't realize time is money. But also butter fat is expensive because it's so precious and wonderful. You know, the best things in life are not free. so yeah necessarily um so that's why french butter has this really um it has a slight tangy taste and it's much more aromatic but it also reacts better in pastries when you're baking with it yeah it's a great point let's move to the more savory side uh or we'll call it the non-baking side of the savory side give me an example of when using premium butter can really make the difference for like a stovetop recipe, something that isn't necessarily baked, but is obviously important in our food ways?

8:53Well, anybody who's had green beans, you know, tossed with melted butter, there's a difference. You know, I like to heat the butter. And also when you heat up, you know, French butter, because it has less water in it, it doesn't sizzle. It doesn't, you know, you don't get that burning thing going on, kind of like water, like sizzling, it sort of melts into this beautiful pool of butter fat. But if you have like green beans, you know, you toss them in this wonderful butter. So it works as something as simple as that. But there are also other things in French baking. If you make sauces and so forth, you know, butter is the foundation of all these sauces in France.

9:34And that's why the quality of butter is so important in France and the world. Oh my goodness. I mean, especially with seafood, you put a great butter on like a scampi or even like a sole or any kind of halibut. It really do taste the difference. I love that memory, too, about the sizzling. That sizzling isn't necessarily good, is what you're saying. Well, I don't think it's it's not terrible, but it's messy. You know, if you've ever clarified butter, it's like, oh, it's, you know, it goes through this process. Then you end up with something, you know, much richer and better. And that's because you're cooking off this water, or getting rid of it.

10:11Speaking of the savory side, like my favorite thing to do with butter is morning toast. You know, every morning we have French butter, salted butter on our toast. And for a long time, we were told, you know, don't eat salted butter. It's not good. It's not fresh. It's not good for baking. It's delicious. It's like, there's nothing better than that. I love salted butter. I like to bake with it. The late chef Judy Rogers, who wrote the Zuni Cafe cookbook, she made puff pastry once and she had used salted butter and i was like your puff pastry is amazing she's like i use salted butter i was like okay i think it's an important point of clarification because i think the general thought in in general home cooking how-to content is salted butter is there because it's impure it's lower quality they're using the salt to to to make up for deficiencies but that's obviously not true at all especially when you're using good premium european butter.

11:06And I have to say, and I won't mention any names, but a friend of mine is a baker. She writes cookbooks. She was known for her precision about things. And I once talked to her about that. And I said, you know, we've been telling people all along that everything, you know, you have to use unsalted butter in baking. She said, I know, I know, I know. It's like, we need to print retractions. You know, it's okay. Well, food changes, you know, you and I are both in the the food business, we see what's happened in the last 10 years, the last five years, the last 20 years, last 30 years. You know, things change and taste change and things that we thought, you know, everyone thought MSG was this terrible thing and now it's kind of in and people are making MSG.

11:50Great comparison. Great comparison. I love that. Let me ask you about regions. You talked about Brittany and that's a great region. Are there any other regions where you think butter in France is really a part of the culture? It's a place we can, if we visit there, we should seek out, you know, the butter scene. The butter scene, you know, Brittany is one place, but Normandy is another. And, you know, you don't want to pit the two against each other because they're both very good. But Normandy is very famous for their butter. They have these cows, which are called Vache Normande, which means Normandy cow.

12:27and they have these beautiful markings on their fur. And their milk is especially prized because it's high protein and it makes especially good butter and cheese. And Normandy is very famous for its cheeses as well as its butter because of the quality of the cream. So Normandy is a great place to go have butter. I spent a couple of days there with a friend who has a bakery in New York and we had this butterfat ice cream. and it was like 11 30 in the morning and they're like oh well you know you guys don't want to have ice cream before lunch we're like yep we do we'll eat anything yeah yeah sign me up i'm good i'm cool what a great memory i love it let me let me get your sense of where in paris you can buy good butter you have your newsletter your sub stack is is so rich with detail and and with uh with recommendations and i just love reading it every time you publish is there like a great couple shops in Paris to buy great butter?

13:28Well, probably the most famous one is the Grand Episserie, which is at the Beaumarchais department store. It's a big sort of supermarket, if you will, but very upscale. And they have an amazing butter department. They have all different brands, all different, you know, they have salted. And in France, it's interesting because we have unsalted butter, which is du, du, which means soft butter. And then we have demi-cell, which is partially salted, and then their cell, which is salted. And that has 3 % or more salt. And some of the butter in France has little grains of like fleur de sel in it, which is nice when you're eating it in your morning toast with honey.

14:07But the Beaumarchais, the Grand Episcery, is a wonderful place. There's a cheese shop called Belver, which has a small chain in France, and they have raw milk butter, which is quite delicious. But even the supermarket in France, just the regular supermarket like Monoprix. You go to the butter aisle and it's two huge cases, you know, different butters and they're good butters. They're not like supermarket brand necessarily butter, which is not necessarily a bad thing either, but they have all sorts of butters at all different price ranges. Yeah. I mean, the dairy section in France alone in those in those grocery stores is amazing.

14:48And the butter scene is is really quite amazing. I'm I'm going to point out, too, in shopping in the States, it's important to do some label reading and to look on the package and find made in France or product of France. That's like the indicator that this is like really good quality European butter made in France or product of France. And, you know, sometimes people, they try to finesse it a little bit and hedge a little bit. But made in France will get you there. Well, people often, you know, I've seen this a lot. They use Frenchish terms. And if you look at the label, it's not French. Yeah.

15:20So it's important to read the labels like made in France means it was made in France. You know, made in the EU means something else. It's not bad. It's nothing bad. You know, EU is a wonderful place, too. And there's great butter from Europe. But if you want butter that's made in France, per se, make sure it says made in France. It doesn't just have a picture of somebody with a beret on it. And there is, you know, there's, there are brands of butter that sound like they're French, but they're not. They're not real made in France products. Yeah. I'm going to close and just ask you, you know, David, let's dig deep here.

15:58Give me your favorite memory with good European butter. You know, when I was in cooking school at Ecole La Nôtre, I was taking classes. You know, you can choose which kind of class you want to take. and I took this, I took candy making class, I took cakes, but I didn't take morning pastries to the class because I didn't want to wake up early. I knew I'd never be a morning baker. And, but every day we'd come in and those people would have baked all these croissants, all these pain au chocolat, all this viennoiserie, which is what morning pastries are called in France. And they were just, they had to give it all away because they were just making, you know, baking and baking and baking.

16:40And so you walked into that room and everything was warm and everything had this buttery, not just smell, but when you touched the pastries, they were crisp from the oven. But your fingers were not sticky or greasy, but you could feel the butter in the crust and you would rip off the bite, you know, the corner of the croissant, that little pointy end with your mouth. And it should, you know, the warm butter, it just exploded. And that's something that was, that's her favorite memory of mine. Oh my gosh. I mean, I'm, I'm just dying here because, you know, in America, sometimes we don't get quite that experience with the vinoisserie, but yeah.

17:25It's very integrated into the French culture. You know, Americans come to France, they're like, oh, why don't we get this at home? It's like, well, you could, but it's not really, it's not part of our culture in America to go get a croissant or, you know, pick up fresh bread in the morning. So there aren't the same, you know, it's not the same bakery culture. So it's a good reason to come to France. Yeah, we're getting better, I have to say. Well, there's great bakeries in America. Yeah, I went to Mel Bakery up in Hudson, New York recently. That place, that place is amazing. But yeah, it's and we're getting better.

17:58But man, there's nothing like walking down the street in any French town and finding your local bakery and having that experience that we all know. I love it. David Leibowitz, thank you so much for joining This Is Taste. Thank you so much for having me on. And it was especially enjoyable to talk about my favorite subject, French butter.

18:25Charles Duke, you're the managing director of the French Dairy Board. Let me ask you, how do you taste butter? Hello, hello, Matt. Thanks for having me. So yeah, I'm the managing director. I pretty much take care of all the relationship with the French dairy companies. And I also manage a promotional campaign. So here we are talking about European butter made in France. So how do I taste butter? Well, when I do purchase butter, I prefer obviously European butter. and I look for the origin and usually pick France. Notice that I said, you know, European butter and not European style butter. So there's a big difference.

19:06I think it does make a difference, you know, for me. I mean, I feel it's a healthier option, you know, as opposed to butter that comes from other places. France has 3 million cows and most farms have an average of 69 cows. So there's a direct relationship between the farmer and the cow. And when one animal gets sick, it's taken out of the herd, it's treated. Not the entire herd is given antibiotics. And none of the cows are treated with RBST hormones or anything. So I feel it's a healthier product. Yeah. I mean, it's obvious when you taste the product too. And let's get into the actual tasting notes when you're actually doing a side-by-side.

19:51What is like a signifier of quality in butter. Yeah, I definitely think that, like you said, you know, you taste the difference. Obviously, there's the animal welfare side that's important in France, the sustainability issue, the environmental issue that are part of the production process. So I definitely think you taste the terroir, you know, the sense of place when we're talking about different types of butters. um france has three geographical indications for butter uh which i'm sure you're you're everybody's familiar with uh there is uh the butter that comes from isigny the butter that comes from bris and the butter that comes from chan poitou so these are all uh protected designation of origin product there's only three and there's a lot of other uh producers around france that produce excellent butter as well but you know i think that when we're talking about flavor, let's talk about geographical indications because it really does link the flavor, the texture, the color, et cetera, to a place, to its seasonalities, to its sidewalk fare of the people who make the product.

21:00So it's all linked. When you talk about terroir and butter, it's something that we do not think about in America. We obviously have butter from Vermont, butter from California, but we certainly don't get into the regionality. And clearly when you have that regionality, that is a really clear indicator of premium and quality products. You know, I think that when you're mentioning Vermont and California, we can look at it as regional as well. I mean, the land in Vermont is not the same land as in California. It's just a question that we're not organized in such a year in the United States. But the idea is the same.

21:33France is a small country compared to the US. And even though it has a lot of different regions and each region has its characteristics that make it unique. I mean, when we're talking about Normandy butter, you know, the P.D.O. is in Yee. We're talking about, you know, countryside that's near the English Channel that benefits from, you know, there's these estuaries that have seawater, that have iodized salt taste that kind of veils onto the grass during the morning dew. I mean, these are all qualities that you cannot find anywhere else. And these obviously are transferred over to the grass on which the cows graze on.

22:15So these are all particularities. And we can say the same thing about breast butter. We can say that about Charon Poitou, which is an area that creates butter that's particularly delicate. It's served pretty much in all the best restaurants in France. So each of them has its characteristics. Let me ask you, does American butter make you mad ever? Of course not. I live in America. I'm American. You know, there's nothing. I grew up with it. So, of course, it doesn't make me mad. However, and, you know, this is all about we're here to educate the American consumer about other options when it comes to butter.

22:55And thanks to podcasts like this, thanks to retailers, campaigns, television, et cetera, we're really educating the American consumer of what's out there. um the only thing that that you know i'm upset about is really how long it took us to to once again be acquainted with butter because uh you know in the states for a long time we were mostly eating uh vegetable spread like parquet and things like that so oh that's yeah yeah i mean it wasn't until really that the butter is back article in the in time magazine that we started to reconsider butter. So that's upsetting, but I'm happy that we've reconnected.

23:37Well said, Charles. You're a good sport to field that question. So European butter in France is a high quality ingredient. It's used in all sorts of cooking and baking. It's also used as a spread for bread, vegetables, it's paired with cheese. I mean, give us a fact or two that would surprise our audience about the versatility of French butter. Because I think we as Americans, we obviously know to bake with it. and we put it on our gorgeous American artisanal breads that we make here. But honestly, there's much more going on to the story. Yes. Well, you know, before European butter was a thing, there was just plain butter, which has been around for a very long time, I would say around 5 ,000 years.

24:16And we can see proof of that in Sumerian tablets that date back to 2500 BCE, for instance, that recount the milking of cows and the churning of milk in jars to make butter. We also find butter molds in Irish peat bogs, you know, so there's and those around 3000 years old. So there's quite a history of butter. It's not something that's new. I think if we fast forward to the 15th century, that's when we see really butter being used in cuisine. And in between those two periods, I mean, a lot of different cultures used it for medicinal purposes, socioeconomic contests, and even religion. So that for me is important, or I think it's interesting, the religious side.

25:03You know, the emergence of butter in the culinary world was partly related to its use on Friday, Saturdays, and Wednesdays, the days that Christians could not eat meat. So the church, which banned the consumption of animal fat during Lent, as well as during lean days, ended up allowing the consumption of butter. And so this dispensation really played an important part in the role of this particular fat as it became an everyday staple. So, you know, also looking at butter as an anthropological or societal lens, I think I was thinking about tomorrow being International Women's Day. And it's worth noting that, you know, what women's role in agriculture and in particular butter making is.

25:48and obviously you know since we're talking about it in France that's that's what I'm concentrating on but in agriculture women have always been present obviously and and making cheese making butter etc but they never had a legal status and it really you know wasn't put in place until the 1980s when it started becoming something the government was looking into and then it wasn't until 2010, really, when women had the ability to own a farm on their own without depending on their husband. So, I mean, it's a relatively recent happening. But when you take all that into consideration, and historically, women have been making butter from the beginning at home, and then sometimes whatever excess they had, they would sell it at the market.

26:39And that would really allow women to bond. It would create culture in the town. It would allow the women to be entrepreneurial. It was a whole part of society, which I think hasn't been discussed sufficiently. And, you know, butter is, you know, a great way to show this in society and to show it as a vector of change and progress. Very well said. And I'm glad you brought that up because we don't think about the way gender played a role in producing of products. And I like the way that you brought this really cool fact. It's very smart. I want to ask you, is there like an underrated way we can use butter as kind of a central ingredient?