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One of France's oldest butter producers makes 380 tons per year [video]

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Re: One of France's oldest butter producers makes 380 tons per year [video]

#11

Post by jmcgough »

yesss I love Bordier, showed this to my partner recently to explain to her why I love nice imported French butters. Traveling there really made me fall in love with French food and the mentality behind a lot of it.

Part of what Europe does right is its legal certification process for traditionally made foods, "protected designation of origin" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_designation_of_origi...). At nicer import stores you can find San Marzano tomatoes with a DOP stamp, so you know it's the real deal. In America we've had a few decades of a race to the bottom, where quality slowly declined in order to generate more profits, until what we have now is unrecognizable from what it originally was.

Re: One of France's oldest butter producers makes 380 tons per year [video]

#12

Post by xwolfi »

jmcgough wrote: post #11

yesss I love Bordier, showed this to my partner recently to explain to her why I love nice imported French butters. Traveling there really made me fall in love with French food and the mentality behind a lot of it. Part of what Europe does right is its legal certification process for traditionally made foods, "protected designation of origin" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_designation_of_origi... ). At nic…

Yeah the food situation in the US is pretty sad. I rmb going there in an exchange and the family dad beeming with pride "look I bought you a French baguette", and suffice to say... it was neither French nor a baguette lol. It barely qualified as food for animals.

Re: One of France's oldest butter producers makes 380 tons per year [video]

#14

Post by riffraff »

jmcgough wrote: post #11

yesss I love Bordier, showed this to my partner recently to explain to her why I love nice imported French butters. Traveling there really made me fall in love with French food and the mentality behind a lot of it. Part of what Europe does right is its legal certification process for traditionally made foods, "protected designation of origin" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_designation_of_origi... ). At nic…

while I'm a big supporter of EU PDO labels they are not perfect, they (generally) do not guarantee quality, and they have the negative effect of "crystallizing" something, which is a bit sad and paradoxical. Still, better than nothing.

Re: One of France's oldest butter producers makes 380 tons per year [video]

#16

Post by cwizou »

sctgrhm wrote: post #4

Very fun to see this here ! I've been to Bordier's shop in St Malo, they do make lovely butter. If you know a bit about France and Brittany, you'll know that "les bretons" are very much fond of their butter. Check out how they make the famous kouign amann and if you get a chance, do have a taste if the quantities of sugar and butter don't put you off ;-)

Even as a "Normand", I have to agree that this indeed lovely butter ;)

To give a bit of context, Bordier is considered very high-end/premium butter that you find mostly at cheesemongers (the large ones you see in the video, they get cut on demand) and Michelin star restaurants (the small cones for example). It's not particularly cheap, but unless you have a local small farm around (doing it the old way, which is probably not much of a thing), it's about as good as butter can get.

I stumbled upon that video a few days ago and was a bit surprised that even their "standardised" products (the "plaquettes", aka the rectangles you'll see around the end with striations on them) were still shaped manually.

Re: One of France's oldest butter producers makes 380 tons per year [video]

#18

Post by pj_mukh »

jmcgough wrote: post #11

yesss I love Bordier, showed this to my partner recently to explain to her why I love nice imported French butters. Traveling there really made me fall in love with French food and the mentality behind a lot of it. Part of what Europe does right is its legal certification process for traditionally made foods, "protected designation of origin" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_designation_of_origi... ). At nic…

Where do you buy this imported butter in America?! I must know.

Re: One of France's oldest butter producers makes 380 tons per year [video]

#20

Post by yamtaddle »

xwolfi wrote: post #12
jmcgough wrote: post #11

yesss I love Bordier, showed this to my partner recently to explain to her why I love nice imported French butters. Traveling there really made me fall in love with French food and the mentality behind a lot of it. Part of what Europe does right is its legal certification process for traditionally made foods, "protected designation of origin" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_designation_of_origi... ). At nic…

Yeah the food situation in the US is pretty sad. I rmb going there in an exchange and the family dad beeming with pride "look I bought you a French baguette", and suffice to say... it was neither French nor a baguette lol. It barely qualified as food for animals.

I live in a US city with a population over 2,000,000 that's seemingly incapable of producing what would be a very mediocre loaf of bread in Paris, for under $12. Actually-good bread simply cannot be had—there isn't any. One consequence of this is that it's impossible to get a decent sandwich here for anything but crazy-high prices.

And don't get me started on the croissant situation. Ugh. They're all too-big and disgustingly doughy (90% of them are in this category), or burnt.

I have no idea why this is the case, but it is. Like I know baguettes are price controlled so you can't compare those, but I mean any bread at all that's decent and somewhat affordable—simply not a thing here. You'd think someone could do it, but evidently not.

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