I tend to cook with olive oil and use butter on bread. Growing up, we had to keep the butter in the fridge. I prefer to keep some butter at room temperature to allow for easy spreading.
Except for the last few months, it ain’t so easy to spread it. Butter sales are up in Canada by 20% during the pandemic. Read an article today which claims farmers are feeding their cows more palm oil, possibly to fatten up the milk. Apparently, people have been complaining their room temperature butter stopped spreading in August. It’s obviously hotter then.
This seems about right. Though my butts been spreading since February, the butter has changed. The companies say nothing material is different. But it is different. Is this just a Canadian thing?
Haven’t noticed a change here. Whenever the quality of butter declines I assume they’re putting more water in it, but I think they’re at the legal limits already. I would think more fat makes the butter spread better, and it doesn’t make sense that room temperature butter is not soft in August here in the US, but up there in Canada by the north pole isn’t the water still hard in August?
We’ve been using Kerry Butter for spreading purposes for quite a while, and the quality has stayed the same.
What I did notice is that we ran out and had to use store brand, damn is that stuff white. Has butter always been that white? I think about the stories I hear about people having to mix in color to margarine to make it look like butter, with butter like this, you could hardly tell the difference anyway.
I generally use Kerry or Plugra. Right now I’ve got Plugra. For any given butter temp it seems to spread about the same as always. It also melts about the same with the same embedded water as I recall.
I live in Canada, and the article was in a Toronto paper. I do switch between two or three brands but in this case it was the same as previous. It still tastes good, not having lost its flavour like chewing gum… if I hadn’t read the article claiming many others noticed this, I would have chalked it up to temperature though this is usually controlled in my house.
It’s not worth much thought. But it brings to mind Cecil’s columns on Diet Pepsi. Everyone notices it is foamier than competitors except, apparently, the manufacturer.
Because this is the Dope, and therefore has to include contributions only tangential to the O.P. and also unsolicited advice:
Have you tried shaving the butter using a cheese grater? The little curls distribute evenly and spread easily, without tearing even the softest of bread.
(O.P. I hadn’t noticed, but I’d have chalked any difference up to the fact that it’s cold as hell where I live right now.)
I keep mine in the fridge, so it’s harder than me. I just grab it and rub it over hot toast or corn or whatever and hope for the best. Then I gotta wash my fingers.
I don’t know how butter from your immalleable Canadian cows will fare, but if you want to keep normal butter spreadable and fresh for up to a month, use a butter bell/crock.
I wanted one for years. Finally treated myself to one.
That little saltwater “moat” requires constant attention and refilling. Ultimately, the butter in the bell went moldy, while the unwrapped half-stick left lying around the counter was fine. Thus endeth my use of a butter bell.
Thus endeth my use of a butter bell.