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From www.cheftalkcafe.com:

ChefJulie
08-24-2000, 12:28 AM
Hello!

Here are a few more thoughts to ponder:

I've found that salted and unsalted butter can be used interchangebly. I have never had a " flop" because I've used whatever was on hand, have you?

Legally, salted butter may legally be colored (generally with anatto). Unsalted butter cannot.

Salted butter may contain up to 2% salt. That's roughly 1/16 teaspoon of salt per tablespoon of butter.

I found ABSOLUTELY NO reference to any difference in quality of ingredients. The sweet cream designation on unsalted butter is a carryover from the days when salted butter was commonly made from sour cream.

Oh, well!

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ChefJulie

08-24-2000, 12:30 AM

And furthermore... www.cheftalkcafe.com

I copied this for you from the " Joy of Cooking" online page.

Butter

Butter is made from churned sweet cream and in the United States must contain at least 80 percent butterfat. Butter also contains water and milk solids. Sometimes a coloring agent (Annatto) is added to salted butter to give it a deep yellow color. In the U.S. butter is graded by letter code according to flavor, color, texture, aroma and body. AA, A, and B are the letter codes used. Grade AA (I use Land O Lakes brand) will give you maximum results in your baking because of its sweet aroma and flavor as well as its smooth creamy texture.

Butter comes in two forms salted and unsalted. Salt is added to butter for flavor and as a preservative so it will have a longer shelf life. However, salt can overpower the sweet flavor of the butter and can also mask any odors. Salted butter also contains higher water content.

I prefer to use unsalted butter because of its taste (fresher and more delicate flavor). Also, the amount of salt added to salted butter varies from manufacturer to manufacturer and it is hard to know how much extra salt to add to your recipe. The rule of thumb is that if you are substituting salted for unsalted butter in a recipe, omit the extra salt in the recipe (i.e. Omit ¼ teaspoon of salt per ½ cup of butter). Unsalted butter has a short shelf life because it contains no preservatives. Most butter has an expiry date on it. However, if you buy unsalted butter and do not use it right away, it is best to freeze it. You can freeze butter for around six months if it is well wrapped so that it will not pick up odors. Just make sure you defrost the butter overnight in the refrigerator before using it.

Never use whipped butter in baking as it has air whipped into it that changes the volume of the butter.

Butter adds flavor and texture to your baking and helps to keep it fresh. It is used as an ingredient in baking but can also be melted and brushed on baking pans to prevent sticking. The temperature of the butter is very important in baking. When room temperature butter is used in your recipe this means your butter should be between 65 and 70 degrees F. This temperature allows the maximum amount of air to be beaten into your batter. This creaming or beating of your butter or butter and sugar creates air bubbles that your leavener (baking powder or baking soda) will enlarge during baking. Most experts recommend 4 to 5 minutes of creaming the butter.

Cold butter is used in some baking (pie crusts). With this method the butter is not absorbed as much by the starch in the flour and layers result when baked thus creating flakiness.

Bon appetit!

Mike in AZ

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From www.muslimconsumergroup.com

This site above is an outstanding source of food ingredient info. Muslims are very conscious and careful of their religious dietary law, Halal.

I hope that I haven't overdone it with this...

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New Ingredients and their Halal status

02/12/05

BUTTER

Butter is made from milk, cream or both and it is known and used worldwide. There are various standards worldwide. In USA, butter must contains at least 80% milk fat by weight, in Australia it has 16% maximum water limit and in Belgium it has to have a minimum of 82% milk fat by weight.

Butter is made differently in different parts of the world. In India and Pakistan, the homemade butter is called Mukhan and it is a cultured butter. It is made from milk by fermenting milk over night to Dahi and then Dahi is churned to make butter or Mukhan. In Europe butter is made from ripened cream or adding lactic acid cultured directly to butter during churning process and it is called cultured butter. Sweet Cream butter and cultured cream butter are manufactured in USA and Canada.

In Europe, lactic acid cultures with flavor producing bacteria are added to cream in ripened cream butter. The starter culture bacteria are Streptococcus lactis, S. cremoris, S. diacetilactis and Leuconostoc. In ripening of the cream for butter, lactose and citric acid are attacked separately to give lactic acid and flavoring compounds such as diacetyl, propionic and acetic acid. The Cultured cream butter is produced by adding 1 to 3% by weight lactic acid cultured bacteria to butter directly during churning.

The Halal status of butter in Europe depends upon the source of starter cultures. It should be from milk source not from meat. The second important thing for the Halal status is the constituents of the media used to grow both starter mother cultures and starter bulk culture for production. If the media is made of only milk or Halal ingredients and no animal derived ingredients are added then the media will be Halal. It should be under Halal certification. Same Halal requirements for butter will be applied to other parts of world where cultured cream is used to make butter.

In USA and Canada, it is different from other parts of the world. The criteria for domestic butter manufacturer are to supply butter for retail supermarkets and for food manufacturer who use butter as an ingredient in their processed food products. In USA, butter is graded by USDA using several characters of butter such as color and flavor to give AA or A grade.

Majority of retail butter is sweet cream butter and it is available under brands such as Land O Lakes, Tillamoak, Challenge, Danish Creamery, Crystal Farm, Organic Valley, Borden, Cabot, Breakstone, and Kellers (salted butter from these brands are Halal), several supermarket brands. Cultured butter is a rich butter made from cultured cream and it is being produced in USA and available in some regions of the USA.

A European Danish cultured butter is marketed in USA under the brand name of Lura Pak by Arla Foods of Denmark. It contains cream, culture and salt. But it is not Halal because lack of certification. Muslim consumers have to know the source of cultures and make up of the growth media.

The most important quality of butter is its flavor, and it is derived from milk constituents, the products of bacterial growth, and added flavor concentrate such as starter distillates. The starter distillate is mentioned as natural flavoring under ingredients statement. Three types of sweet cream butter is available for table purpose in supermarkets and they are salted butter, unsalted butter and whipped butter. Air is used to whip the butter to make fluffy and light butter.

The salted sweet cream butter is made from cream and salt (1.6 to 1.8%). Cream is separated in centrifugal separators from milk and then it is pasteurized. Cream is then churned in metal churns until fat globules coalesce into butter granules. Salt is added at this time to butter granules and it is churned until the fat of the cream solidifies.

Unsalted butter is made with cream and starter distillate and ingredients of the unsalted butter is cream and natural flavoring.

Starter distillate is made from fermentation of skim milk or non fat dry milk by several bacteria.

Starter distillate is considered as GRAS (generally recognized as safe) by FDA and regulated under code of food regulation title 21 part 184.1848. According to FDA, starter distillate or butter starter distillate is a steam distillate of the culture of any or all of the following species of bacteria grown on a medium consisting of skim milk usually fortified with 0.1% citric acid: Streptococcus lactis, S. cremoris, and S. lactis subsp. diacetylactis, Leuconostoc citrovorum, and L. dextranicum. The ingredient contains more than 98% water, and reminder is a mixture of organic flavor compounds. Besides diacetyl, starter distillate contains minor amounts of acetaldehyde, ethyl formate, ethyl acetate, acetone, ethyl alcohol, 2-butanone, acetic acid and acetoin.

According to a starter distillate manufacturer in USA, there is no alcohol present in their starter distillate but they do not have scientific proof such as Gas Chromatography to justify their claim, although their products are Halal and Kosher certified. The Halal certification organization should run GC before certifying the starter distillate because some bacteria mentioned in FDA statement produce acids only and some acid and alcohol such as in the case of Kefir. It is also depend upon which bacteria are used to manufacturer starter distillate. It is possible that they might use those bacteria which do not produce alcohol during fermentation. Some may argue that amount of alcohol present is very small but we have to bring this knowledge to Muslim consumers and they will decide whether to consume the unsalted butter or not in USA and Canada. Our recommendation is to do thorough investigation with the manufacturer asking scientific evidence in regard with absence of alcohol. If there is no alcohol present in starter distillate or natural flavoring then they consume the unsalted butter if it is under certification.

Unsalted butter is used in many processed food products but this butter contains 100% cream. It does not make sense to use unsalted butter with natural flavoring because it will not provide butter flavor in the processed foods where other ingredients are used, so they have to add natural butter flavor to provide flavor in the finished product. Unsalted butter is sold in 50 pounds block and majority of it comes from New Zealand, Europe and South American countries because domestic butter is expensive. Both domestic and foreign unsalted butter is made of 100% cream. Unsalted butter with no flavoring in butter is used in butter croissants but the manufacturer has to add natural butter flavor to provide the butter flavor in croissant. Baking companies usually do not use salted butter because salt in the butter imparts toughness to the gluten structure of the baked products.

Our recommendation is to buy only salted butter from supermarkets because it is always made with cream and salt and no flavoring is added to it. It is Halal even without any certification and Muslim consumers do not have to worry about the presence of alcohol in salted butter.

07/18/04

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Why is it that when I drop my toast it always lands butter side down, huh? Dang!

Mike in AZ

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From www.webexhibits.org

Canned Butter

Popular as the firkin was as a bulk butter container, its contents oftentimes became tainted with woody flavors. When gold was discovered in the Yukon, the affluent miners were willing to pay any price in order to satisfy their taste for fine butter. Perishable foods were unknown delicacies in the Arctic Zone. Butter, of course, was one of these perishables. Suppliers in the United States working on the problem found that butter sealed in cans from which the air had been exhausted was still creamy and fresh months later. Thus, the discovery of gold in Alaska gave impetus to the canning of butter in tin containers -- a practice that was later followed in supplying export demand and for expeditions to remote and unknown regions.

The U.S. Navy became interested in this method of packing butter and in 1912 considerable effort was made to secure a grade of canned sweet butter that could be carried for a long time in almost any climate. It took a couple of years of hard work to get the butter up to the required standard, but in 1914 substantial orders for millions of pounds of such butter were placed by the U.S. Navy, which orders were filled satisfactorily but only with the cooperation of a hundred or more plants in Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin. Chief Rawl of the Dairy Division of the Department of Agriculture became so interested in the development that he suggested that this sweet cream butter be put on the commercial market -- which was finally done.

Thus, today the sweet cream butter sold in many markets throughout the United States that has enjoyed an ever-increasing market had its origin in the " strike" of gold in the Yukon in 1861.

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Mmmm.... butter is better

Mike in AZ
 

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