I second using a butter bell, also known as a French butter dish.
I for one abhor unsalted butter and would just like to provide a moment of solemn compassion for anyone who has ever had the misfortune of experiencing this atrocity.
I recently saw a demonstration of biscuit making on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives in which the guy froze his butter and the grater blade for his giant restaurant electric machine. He grated the frozen butter and then made his biscuit dough. Seemed like a great technique for getting optimum flakiness.
See, everybody? Works great. Butterplaners of the world, unite!
Butter curling also works very well with toast. As soon as the toast pops, you cut your thin curls and spread them gently on the toast and wait a few seconds. The hot toast will melt the butter quickly (if you have cut it thin) so that you can easily spread it over the entire surface of the toast.
I have been waiting so long to read a thread on the hard butter/soft bread issue, which is so neglected in our modern public discourse!
It’s a “butter dispenser” and it works great. You put a stick of butter in, twist the screw and it extrudes a thin ribbon of cold butter.
No toast crumbs in the butter, no knives or spreaders to clean up. The butter is hermetically sealed from air on all surfaces, and so keeps very well. I love this thing.
I’m lazy and stupid. I hit the ‘add a minute’ button and then (hopefully) watch the timer until it hits 50 seconds. You’d think I’d learn after melting several cubes, wouldn’t you?
You are… an extraordinary person.
After watching an episode of that Nerdy-looking guy on Good Eats (In Defense of Butter), I started making honey-whipped butter.
It’s roughly 1/4 cup of honey whipped into a pound of butter. The benefits are many:
- It’s delicious, particularly when making garlic-bread or dropping a dollop onto steamed veggies.
- Honey, a natural antiseptic, seems to fight off bacteria/mold, making it a little safer to leave out on the counter.
- The honey also helps the whipped butter retain air at microscopic levels, so it’s super fluffy.
- Since there’s more air in there, you actually use less product at a time but you still get full flavor
- My pound of butter runs out in six weeks rather than two.
For those of you with a Sweet Tomatoes restaurant (Souplantation in California) it’s the same thing they serve by the muffins and potatoes, though perhaps a bit lighter on the honey. I leave the container out over-night, or at least a half-hour before I expect to use it. If my kitchen is room-temperature (You know, the same temperature as The ROOM at Greendale Community College) then the butter is perfectly soft enough to spread, but not squishy-runny like hand-lotion. If it was cold overnight, 12 seconds in the microwave seems to make it just right.
----G!
Home-made love!
Hot Jelly-roll l-l-love!
. Steve Perry (Journey)
. HomeMade Love
. Departure
How to avoid melting the pat of butter in the microwave: Put a cup of cold water in with it. It takes a bit longer but gives you a bigger window of opportunity for that sweet spot.
I live alone, so I put out a half-stick at a time.
When the butter gets too soft for your taste. Or when you find it in a puddle on the plate you’re using for storage 
hummm I’m thinking… maybe you should use the new spread land o lakes came out with its real butter mixed with a slight amount of canolla oil, and it spreads without tearing up the bread. Another solution, for those who have time and are free of carpo tunnel … purchase a pint of heavy creme open add a fourth tsp. of salt, and shake vigorously 500 times, pour the clear blueish milk off the top, and there will be a half pint of fresh homemade butter that will spread like a dream…then go to country and find a nest of honey bees and glean some fresh honey to go with your fresh butter, oh but then you would probably have to bake fresh bread to go with all that. Or if you insist on:D real butter like I do, and or Paula Dean does,( well i’m not sure of that fact now that she has admitted to having diabetes) then perhaps you should invest in an airtight tupperware type butter dish, and place in on the stove in the morning and by the time you get your bacon and eggs and warm grits prepared, the butter will be soft enough to spread.
You know every year I make butter cookies and I frost them with real butter and I leave them out all day, and place them in the refrigerator all night and have never had a problem, and butter if kept in an airtight container and then placed back in the refrigerator at night shouldn’t be any different, I also use milk in my butter creme frosting, and have not had any problems from eating cookies that sat out all day.
If you don’t feel comfortable leaving a dairy product out all day, you can also microwave it, babysit it though, like 5 secs. at a time and it does work but you must babysit it, or you’ll have
puddle butter , try to say that real fast. If you are in need of a new refrigerator and this is a constant problem, they make refrigerators that keep your butter soft, and keep everything else cold.
WTF? Pumpkin butter?
[slight hijack]
In my family growing up we never kept the butter in the refrigerator. Even in Florida in the summer when my crazy dad decided that air conditioning was too expensive. The butter got all melty but not rancid.
Now, my husband refuses to let the butter stand at room temperature. No amount of convincing will sway his opinion that “it’s dairy, you can’t leave it at room temperature because it will kill you” or something like that.
I miss soft butter.
[/slight hijack]
Do we now have a [COLOR=“DarkOrange”]Butterist[/COLOR] instead of a Grapeist?
I dunno, but I find orange type on a white screen hard to read.
My friend used to keep butter in the fridge, and would slice it thinly and place on the bread. Worked for her!