MuseumChick | Danee Gilmartin

Posting about butter and cheese may be a stretch for a MuseumChick blog post but the topic is about culture (pun intended). Besides, it's my blog and I'll derail if I want to!

Although, I'm not posting about my awesome French butter experience just because I want to. I also know you would like to hear about where the best butter in the world is found and how it is made (who doesn't like to talk about great food?).

I don't have to test all the butter in the world to know that Jean Yves Bordier is the master of butter making and I found a whole Maison du Beurre of his amazing lactose products in St Malo, France. 

You would think that the butter master would have a shop in Paris, but he doesn't. I've found his butter at Le Bon Marché and sometimes at Fauchon but a whole maison of butter and cheese a la Bordier is just too much to handle. I almost went into a lactose induced coma.

St. Malo is washed ashore on the Brittany Coast of France and with aqua water has become a popular vacation spot. I found the world famous oysters from Cancale in all the St. Malo restaurants and dairy products from heaven. St. Malo was my furthest stop on the road trip that Mr. MuseumChick and I took from Paris going through the Loire Valley to the coast of Brittany in a tuna can Smart Car.

Tucked away in the cobblestone alleys of the inner wall in St. Malo is Jean Yves Bordier's Maison du Beurre.

Entering the bright blue doorway I noticed immediately that this wasn't a typical shop, it was a museum of sorts with informational light-boards and antique butter churning equipment.

Reading the light-boards placed around the shop I discovered that there isn't a better place to get butter than in Western France where more the 70% of French butter is produced. Butter production has been concentrated in Basse Normandie, Brittany, the Pays de la Loire and Poitou-Charentes due to their bountiful grazing fields. That means when you buy it out here it will be at its freshest.

Fun butter fact for the gals- In ancient times butter was not used solely as a food. It was also used as a medicine, especially as an ointment. Then at the court of King Francois I, the fashion was for women to have a "fresh and uniform" complexion, as white and as smooth as possible. To achieve this, butter become a beauty product until the 19th century. My guess that this is when they figured out that butter slathered all over the face could cause some serious breakouts. 

This wooden box is used to give the butter its decorative shape and design imprint. There are three periods of change in the history of molding and packing (compressing) butter. At first "patting" the butter was used, where two boxwood padd
les are used to pat the sides of the butter, moving and shaping it. Then in the 18th century, molding was done using wooden molds like the one below. Since the 20th century, the mechanization of molding started, using forming and packing machines. What makes Bordier butter so special is that first, he uses the finest milk from animals in the region, then he uses the most ancestral method of production and packing, maintaining tradition and taste.
 

This is how it starts- the butter in a big lump getting ready to be shaped and softened.

After shaping and "patting", it is wrapped. The final packaging looks like this minus the wooden knife (but they sell those separately).

One thing to remember when eating good butter- always cut a pad of butter and place it on the food; never spread it.

With the best butter in the world calling your name it's easy to overlook the cheese in Bordier's shop, but Mr. MuseumChick insisted that we try one (okay three) and I didn't argue with him.

I got the loot, let's go!

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