Burned $60 on fancy European butter before learning my cheap store brand works better for croissants

I spent months watching YouTube videos about how French butter with 82% fat content was the secret to perfect croissants. Last week I finally ordered three blocks of that imported stuff for $20 each plus shipping. Made a batch and they came out flat and greasy. Then I grabbed a $4.99 stick of Land O Lakes from the corner store out of desperation and my layers actually puffed up nice and tall. Turns out the cheap butter has more water which creates steam and helps the dough rise. Has anyone else fallen for an expensive ingredient that ended up being worse than the basic version?

2 comments

2 Comments

kais671d ago

Man that "82% fat content" thing got me too. I kept seeing it in every baking video and thought I was missing some secret. But here's the thing... did you try lowering your oven temp by like 25 degrees when you used the fancy butter? Because I read somewhere that the higher fat content changes how it melts so you gotta adjust. Still sucks that the cheap stuff worked better right out of the gate though. What kind of flour are you using? I wonder if that makes a difference too.

spencer_chen620h ago

Yeah I heard something similar from a food science podcast I was listening to. The host was a pastry chef and she said the whole 82% fat thing is more for European style pastries where you want a denser, richer crumb. For American style croissants you actually want that extra water in the cheap butter because it turns into steam and lifts the layers. The high fat stuff just melts into the dough and makes everything greasy. Your mileage may vary but from what I gathered it really depends on what kind of outcome you're going for. She also mentioned that if you chill your fancy butter blocks down to almost frozen and grate them into the dough it helps keep the layers separate. I tried that trick with some overpriced Plugra once and it actually worked decently.