Battle of the Butters!

hello everyone and welcome back to cherry lanes where today we're going to break down the results for the battle of the butters that i've been conducting over the last two weeks if you follow me on facebook and or instagram you might have seen this whole crazy process take place and thank you so much for participating in my instagram polls where i asked you lovely home bakers how you usually choose your butters and what brand of butter you typically go for in your regions so according to butterjournal.com there are essentially 15 different types of butters yes 15 i know i had no idea either from unsalted to salted sweet cream european style cultured ghee clarified drawn whipped spreadable light organic whey raw cream or compound butters and i would like to add another one to the list which is halal butters i'll leave some information in the description below about all these butters if you're interested in knowing a little bit more about them okay so first things first let me just share a little bit about my process so because cherry leans is a baking channel and baking typically calls for unsalted butter to be used i went out and looked for eight different brands of unsalted butter commonly used here in western australia which were first of all president butter which is a french milk-based butter made in the heart of normandy in france second lewis road creamery butter which is a new zealand butter derived from milk produced by grass-fed cows third is davendale butter which is an australian butter made from fresh dairy milk fourth is mainland butter which is an organic new zealand butter made from organic milk fifth is western star's chef's choice unsalted butter which is an australian cultured butter made from pasteurized cream and is also a milk based butter which happens to also be the butter i usually go for for everything for no real reason other than because they have done fantastic at psychologically marketing this product to me and it's also pretty cost effective for a butter that calls themselves chef's choice six is lurpak which is a danish milk based cultured butter made from fresh cream seventh is cole's home brain butter which is a milk-based australian butter and last but not least number eight i use a no brand unsalted butter that was sold in kohl's and this is actually a new zealand butter according to choice.com however for this no brand butter i also couldn't seem to find information on whether this butter was whey or milk based cultured or pasteurized but for me i think it doesn't really matter unless you have allergies to worry about or you are specifically trying to find a halal friendly butter that is milk based instead of whey based as that is one of the concerns behind halal certified butters and the difference between cultured and pasteurized butter simply refers to whether the milk or cream used to make the butter was pasteurized by being treated with heat to kill the bacteria or cultured which involves adding bacteria to form curds now majority of bakers who responded to my instagram polls did say that flavor was key in how they chose their butters over price however several people did respond saying that they simply go for whatever's cheapest in the supermarket and i personally believe that there is absolutely nothing wrong with being smart with your money and going for your cheapest option butters especially when you're making a simple cake where you're going to incorporate other prominent flavors like say you're making a chocolate cake where your cake or whatever baked good you're making doesn't solely rely on the flavor of butter to make it tasty unlike a butter cake where you definitely want to make sure that you choose your favorite butter with the best flavor which might also be a cheaper home brand butter let's find out however when it comes to more delicate pastry baking like when you're making croissants that's when we should care a little bit more about the precise type of butter you are using you want to make sure that you're using a butter that does not soften too quickly has really good plasticity and of course one with the most prominent butter flavor in your opinion because croissants heavily rely on the flavor of butter to make it tasty for this reason i decided to conduct this battle of the butters by insanely making eight batches of properly laminated croissants in one go using the eight aforementioned types of unsalted butters and broke them down based on firstly fat and sodium levels per 100 grams soften speed at room temperature flavor color plasticity and price per 100 grams now in phase one of the flavor tests i recruited seven independent everyday food lovers just like you and me for a blind taste test where they were instructed to taste all eight croissants and grade how prominent they felt each butter flavor was from a scale of one to five taking small bites and going back and forth until they were satisfied with their gratings only after i received their gratings back did i reveal what butter was used in which croissant i tried my best to ensure that they did not discuss their preferences so as to reduce any influence they may have on each other so now without further ado for phase one of the flavor tests these were the results all right all right all right all right now leading with the best flavor we have kohl's home rain butter scoring 22 points all about a no-brand unsalted butter at 21 points and danish lou park butter standing closely with a strong 20 points and governing globes coming close coming closer we have mainland and western starbutter scoring a waffling 18 points followed by davendale scoring only 14 points followed by prison butter at 12 points and lewis road covered in layers unfortunately coming in last with only 11 points honestly i was really surprised that precedent butters got so poorly in the first round that i decided to add president butter to the mix for phase two of the flavor test however before i go on to phase 2 results i think it's worth sharing that out of these 7 taste testers only 3 voted for cole's home brand butter as having the most prominent butter flavor and 3 voted for the no brand butter as having the best butter flavor and as you can see from the circles here several taste testers did find that some butter flavors were comparable to each other so just from this image i think most of you can already tell what i'm trying to get at that taste really is very preferential depending on your palette and once again none of these taste testers knew what butter was used in which croissant only until after i got their verdicts back so what i'm hoping to achieve here in the flavor test is more of just a general idea of which brand of butter has the most appealing flavor according to the average everyday person now for phase 2 of the flavor test i chose 8 different individuals who weren't part of phase one's flavor test to rate these top three butters and included present butter to the mix so i could corroborate to closer accuracy which butter really had the most appealing and prominent butter flavor i followed the exact same process as phase one gave them the same instructions and they all also had no idea which butter was used in which croissant until after so not so surprisingly this time no brand butter came in first with 29 points followed closely by cole's home brand butter at 27 points then surprisingly president butter came in third at 24 points and finally loper not far behind at 23 points what i found interesting is that although president butter scored one point higher than lopak overall in phase two of the flavor tests none of the taste testers rated president butter as their ultimate favorite out of the four options so what i'm deriving from this non-academic and pretty poorly controlled experimental research as i didn't conduct this research in a lab of any sort and i'm not claiming that i did is that branded all luxury butters in my opinion and based off this study truly did not equate to a more appealing or prominent butter flavor so how do the results of the flavor test correlate with the fat and sodium content of the butters in seeing how both cole's home brand and the no-brained unsalted butter both scored exceptionally well taking first and second places in both phase one and two of the flavor tests mmm tasty grass you can see here how they both also have the highest total fat content per hundred grams compared to all the other butters so i dig a little deeper to try find academic studies on the role of fat in flavor perception and sense of taste while one study revealed that brain activity associated with flavor perception of flea emulsions were significantly more activated in non-fatty samples they also emphasized the importance that this does not necessarily mean that lower fat products increases a person's perception of flavor another study revealed that different individuals have varied taste sensitivities for fat that influences dietary behaviors reporting that individuals with a decreased sensitivity to fat taste are associated with an increased consumption of fat this simply means that some people are able to taste fat more easily than others however the controversy behind whether fat actually has taste remains open for research to be able to have a more definitive conclusion on whether fat can be classified as a sixth sense of taste in saying that older studies have reported a link between palatability to higher fat contents and foods so in reviewing these studies and comparing them to my personal findings i would say that there might just be a small correlation between higher fat content and palatability as well as flavor perceptions of butter however as you can see luripot has also one of the lowest fat content per hundred grams and it also scored exceptionally well in the flavor test leaving the correlation between flavor and taste with fat content to continue to be inconclusive and let me just quickly go through the sodium content of these butters as you can see lurpak unsalted butter is the only butter that actually has zero grams of sodium added to it and western star has the highest with 18 milligrams i'm also really pleased that both coals and no brand butters maintained pretty low sodium content which tells me that both groups of the taste testers were more than likely not influenced by sodium content tricking their taste buds into reporting better flavor preferences now in terms of soften speed at room temperature lewis road creamery butter softens the fastest and also has the poorest plasticity where based on comparing the eight butters i gave it a score of 0.5 stars simply because after a few bends as you can see the butter simply cracked instead of staying elastic meaning this is not the butter that you'll want to use for making croissants western style and present butter both soften the slowest where president butter has a pretty good plasticity with a score of 4 and western style having one of the poorest plasticities with a score of 1 out of 5. i'm assuming the reason why precedent butter is so highly recommended online for making croissants other than because it is a french butter and croissants are french would probably be due to its ability to retain its composition at room temperature simply put the fact that present butter does not soften so easily at room temperature combined with its reasonably good plasticity scores results in this butter being ideal for croissants however the flavor scores reported from this little study does not convince me to use it please don't hurt me french people no brand unsalted butter softened the third quickest and has a poor plasticity score of 1 meaning this butter is also not quite suitable for croissants but because this butter performs so well in the flavor test i reckon it will actually be fantastic for baking deliciously buttery cakes and cookies now looking at kohl's and low park butter we can see that lurpark softens the fourth quickest with a comparably good plasticity score as precedent butter at four stars whereas cole's home brand butter softens the second slowest with a pretty good plasticity score of 3.5 stars i would say that both coals and lurpak butters will perform really well in making croissants with exceptional butter flavor prominence where using lure park might require you to work a little bit quicker and in a cooler environment than if you were using cole's home brand butter now looking at color butter actually has a natural pale yellow color that can range from deep yellow to white depending on the fat content of the butter as well as what the cows feed on grass-fed cows carry a yellow pigment called beta-carotene found naturally in grass and flowers which is why lewis road creamery butter derived from the milk produced by grass-fed cows had the deepest yellow color grain-fed cows on the other hand produce much paler butter in comparison as grains do not have much better carotene on top of that some dairy cows may be fed a combination of grass and grain depending on the seasons where in the winter they might need to be brought inside from the pastures and fed grain in saying all of this because beta-carotene is only a pigment and while it does contribute to how we psychologically perceive taste the color of butter does not actually affect anything other than how using a pail of butter will result in paler baked goods and when it comes to price here's just a quick overview of the average price per 100 grams of each of these butters from most to least expensive so in conclusion and a quick summary for those who skipped right to the results first of all branded luxury butters compared in this study did not equate to better or more prominent butter flavor compared to the cole's home brand or no brand options different individuals have varied taste sensitivities to fat that influences dietary behaviors controversy remains on whether fat actually has taste and more research is required to be able to decide if fat can be considered our sixth sense of taste there might be some truth and correlation behind the common statement that the higher the fat content the better the flavor but scientifically that is not definitive cole's home brand and no-brained butters reported the best and most prominent butter flavor for both phase one and two of the blind flavor tests followed by low heart brand unsalted butter had the highest fat content at 83.6 grams per hundred grams followed by coal's home brand at 83.1 grams of fat per 100 grams western star had the highest sodium content for an unsalted butter followed by president and then lewis row creamery butter lewis road creamery butter softens the fastest whereas western star and precedent butter softens the slowest mainland butter had the best plasticity of 5 out of 5 followed by davendale butter at 4.5 stars president and lurpark had comparably good plasticity scores of 4 out of 5. comparing soft speed and plasticity i would say that davendale laura park president and cole's home brand butters would work great for croissants because they soften the slowest and have excellent plasticity where using low park or cole's home brand will likely result in a more prominent butter flavor butter color depends on whether the cows were grass or grain fed or a combination of both grass-fed cows produce deeper yellow butters due to the beta-carotene pigment found in grass and flowers color psychology makes us believe that deeper yellow butters will taste better as it looks more appetizing however the color of butter does not actually affect taste lewis road creamery butter had the deepest yellow color and precedent butter was the palest followed by lopak pale butters will result in paler baked goods and deeper yellow butters will result in deeper golden yellow baked goods now lewis road creamery is the most expensive butter followed by president and then lower park and not surprisingly of course no brand unsalted butter sold at kohls was the cheapest followed by cole's home brand so in a nutshell i will probably start using cole's home brand butter from now when i'm making simple cakes and cookies as they also do not contain any artificial flavors or colors either and when it comes to more delicate pastries like making croissants i will likely use low parks hey so you finally made it to the end i finally made it to the end and all limitations will be addressed in the description below and if you enjoyed this video please don't forget to like comment and subscribe share this with your friends and family and let me know in the comments what butter you usually go for in your regions peace and love everyone and till next time i'm cherry lane

Channel: Cherrylane's

Views: 24,632

Keywords: baking, easy recipes, how to bake cupcakes, cookies, cupcakes, cakes, desserts, recipes, baker, baking tutorial, battle of the butters, what is butter made of, types of butter, all about butter, what is butter, halal butter, french butter compared to australian butter, french butter, danish butter, butter reviews, homebrand butters, coles, woolsworth, president butter, lurpak, devondale butter, devondale, mainland butter, what makes butter yellow, butter education

Id: HPmfl-LdKdk

Length: 16min 49sec (1009 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 02 2020