Truc

When I was little, my mother called me "butterball". It wasn't because I was fat (I was actually underweight), it was because I really loved butter and would even eat it straight from the dish.

My love for butter continues to this day and nothing makes me feel more ready to take on (almost) any culinary task than to have a sufficient amount of butter in my fridge and freezer. I rarely have fewer than four packs (a kilo in total) on hand, which allows me to whip up batches of puff pastry, kouign amann, brioche and other types of dough whenever I want.

Not all butter is created equal, though. Purely out of butter snobbery, I only buy French brands, and preferably the types made from cultured raw milk. Because raw milk isn't pasteurised or homogenised, it has more flavour - the high heat used in the pasteurising process kills off any subtleties. Culturing (allowing the milk to ferment) also adds flavour.

You can buy butter either salted or unsalted, and some brands also make demi sel, which is somewhere in between. Salted butter is delicious on bread while the unsalted variety is usually used for cooking and baking because it allows the cook to measure the amount of salt being used more accurately.

The amount of butterfat is important to the quality of the butter, too. Unless it has been clarified, butter isn't a "pure" fat like shortening or oil, because it contains milk solids and water. Most brands of butter have a butterfat content that varies from about 80 per cent to 85 per cent or even higher. That 5 per cent doesn't sound like much of a difference, but those with more butterfat make for flakier pastries. Some shops specialising in baking products sell butter labelled "croissant butter" (or some such), which has a butterfat content of about 99 per cent.

Whipped butter is just that - it is light and airy, and suitable for spreading on bread, but it doesn't work for anything else.

Truc (tryk): noun, masculine, trick, gimmick, device. A French word for a chef's secret.