Following is a transcript of the video.
Claudia Romeo: We're in Saint-Malo, Brittany, France, and we're about to visit Bordier, a traditional maison du beurre, or butter house. When you picture butter, you probably think of a yellow block in a plastic bag. Well, not here. Here, butter is done artisanally. Everything is churned, kneaded, and shaped by hand. And I can't wait to see that. Let's go.
In February, we met with Jean-Yves Bordier, son and grandson of butter and cheese makers, who brought back to France the 19th-century technique of malaxage, using this big wooden wheel to knead the butter. To Jean-Yves, the malaxage is a more romantic way to make butter.
Jean-Yves Bordier: I always followed the principle that what is most important is emotions. Then, we can see what we can do with these emotions. But if I make a product that's only marketing, I'm not interested. Just like I'm not interested in making 10 millions tons of butter. It's not my job. Me, I'm a little good man and I make little things.
Claudia: The malaxage is really what makes Bordier butter unique. These are 50-kilo blocks of butter extracted from milk and are pretty standard in the butter-making industry, even for the most artisanal. But while everyone else would use huge centrifuges to filter out the last remaining drops of buttermilk, butter at the Bordier workshop is flattened by a wooden wheel and worked by hand by Eric.
Jean-Yves: What we're going to do here is we're going to show you a complete malaxage. We're going to cut these pieces of butter, and we're going to transform them. Voilà.
Claudia: Let's do it. Little by little, the malaxage is going to give butter a new life. Dating back to the late 19th century, this tool was first used to rework different butters. At Bordier, it also helps give butter the desired texture.
Jean-Yves: It's the worst time of the year for kneading because butter, the quality of the texture of butter is the result of what animals eat. In winter, animals eat fodder, which is going to give white butters — friable, brittle, with no particular smell. Look at the screw here. It's slightly wet, but it's not completely soaked. We have dry butters. So, little by little, the butter maker is going to make things more pleasant to work with.
Claudia: And the wood, does it help you?
Jean-Yves: Either wood or metal — it's a mechanical movement, it doesn't matter. On the other hand, it's more pleasant, it's prettier. That's it. Pretty things are important in life.
Claudia: Yes, it's true.
Jean-Yves: What he's doing is very hard. It's very hard, what Eric is doing. It's the hardest step. And then he gets a remarkable butter, and honestly it's not easy.
Eric: You're just going to roll it like this. Try to roll it like this. We're going to let it turn, and then you're going to get it.
Claudia: There's, like, no way I'm gonna do this.
Eric: Go for it.
Claudia: This way?
Eric: Roll it, yes. Gloves are too big. Not this way! Not this way! Bring it towards you. You're going to use your thumb.
Claudia: OK. Where?
Eric: I do it once, and then you do it. You leave your finger like this. This is OK?
Claudia: This works. It's smaller.
Eric: Go, here.
Claudia: Here?
Eric: It's good.
Claudia: And when you see him doing that, it's... it almost has, like, an harmony. It's not easy. Monsieur Bordier said this is 50 kilos of butter. So, try and lift a bit of it, it's gonna be, like, what? 10 kilos just in one go?
Claudia: How long do you need to learn picking up butter like this?
Jean-Yves: So, to learn this job, three years.
Claudia: Three years.
Jean-Yves: Yes. Do you know why?
Claudia: No. Why?
Jean-Yves: Because the sun and the rain never fall the same way every year. And it's the sun and rain that are going to give flavor to the grass and to the land, which cows have to like and that seasons are going to set to music. Spring, summer, fall, winter. And to learn how to discover butter, which is the result of what animals eat, you need three years.
Claudia: Eric then salts the butter using fine salt. This step is crucial to make sure the butter finally rejects all the leftover water it has in it.
Jean-Yves: We're about to see — take a look at something. The screw is about to get wet, water is about to flow, salt is about to attack the fat molecule, and the fat molecule takes the salt like an aggression and rejects the water it has in it, and the water goes away. We will lose almost a liter of water. But — and I'll finish — losing humidity, I concentrate dry matter. In the dry matter there's fat, and in the fat there's flavor.
Claudia: Oh, wow. Actually, I can see that it's getting wetter and wetter. It's picking up more water.
Jean-Yves: Do you hear the noise? When my butter sings, it cries. When my butter cries, it sings.
Claudia: According to Jean-Yves, they work with old techniques, but they are not trying to recreate an old recipe.
Jean-Yves: We work with yesterday's technique, but we use today's living milk. So the butter I make, the goal of my butter is not to find the butter of 1857. What Eric does is truly something that doesn't exist anymore, what you see there, it's movements from the 19th century with milk from 2020. And it's like restoring and perpetuating the quality of our ancestors but living in the world of today.
So, I'm going to get a very small piece.
Claudia: Big one. Ah, no.
Jean-Yves: Ah, no. Like this? OK. Voilà.
Claudia: It's salty.
Jean-Yves: Take your time. It's very salty.
Claudia: It's softer than the butter I'm used to.
Jean-Yves: 24 hours later. Yesterday's butter.
Claudia: It's much sweeter, this one.
Jean-Yves: Salt fades. Salt doesn't disappear, but its intensity diminishes, and on the other hand, the taste of the cream is more important. A good butter doesn't ever have to be eaten straight out of the baratte or the mixer; it has to be eaten three, four, five days later because the balance, the harmony of flavors set up.
The grooves, the streaks that we see on the butter are the proof that this butter has been made here. It's the reproduction of the slotted screw, and this is the irrefutable proof.
Claudia: Because you are the only one that has it.
Claudia: Bordier also makes flavored butters, including chili butter, buckwheat butter, vanilla butter, and more.
Claudia: Do you also make seaweed butter?
Jean-Yves: Yes. This was my first composed butter, in 1985. It's a bit of a particular butter. It's an interesting butter because it is sometimes very colored and at the same time extremely scented. Here, I let you taste it, you close your eyes. Close your eyes. Voilà. Close your eyes. You have no problems? Close your eyes. You don't have wet feet? Because that happens often with seaweed butter, your feet get wet. It's OK?
Claudia: Yeah. It's very fresh. It's very fresh and... yeah, it tastes like seaweed, but it's not fishy at all. It's nice and sweet. It really reminds you of that, like, seaside wind when you're just sitting there at the beach and you can smell it.
Jean-Yves: Careful! There are seagulls.
Claudia: Yeah, I've just, like, been catapulted into the picture now.
Jean-Yves: Terrific smell.
Claudia: It's marvelous. It's really incredible. And so this one is your signature from Brittany, because you're from this region?
Jean-Yves: It's the roots of my identity. It's a real identity, like buckwheat butter. It has to be like this. And then, if I go to Japan — I discovered yuzu like this. If I go elsewhere, I don't know. Maybe one day if I go to Mars I will make a green butter. I don't know.
Claudia: Ah, no. I would like to taste that, then. [laughing]
Claudia: After it's ready, each stack of freshly churned butter is then placed into this butter cutter, another machine signature to Bordier.
Jean-Yves: It's very important that when doing the models we don't have a machine that's violent, but one that's very delicate. So this small pusher, the lumps of butter that have just been made are put in the pusher, and quite simply, with a cylinder effect, they are pushed here. And thanks to this device from the 19th century, the spacing of each guitar string gives us the desired grammage.
Claudia: There's a lot of water.
Jean-Yves: There is always water.
Claudia: So this means that there's still water that's coming out of the butter?
Jean-Yves: My traditional method, there's always water. We don't add any water. On the contrary, we take it out.
Claudia: This machine, are you the only one that has it?
Jean-Yves: Oh, yes. This one is for cutting, yes. And it was still used 250 years ago as well. Do you want to see when?
Claudia: Yes.
Jean-Yves: During the French Revolution. We call it Marie Antoinette. I'm going to play for you a work from the 18th century, harp and butter.
Claudia: 50 kilograms of butter!
Jean-Yves: Look, there's some left here.
Claudia: The only thing that is left is shaping. And just like the rest, it is all done by hand. Each shape and size is custom. Some chefs may order these bite-sized shapes; others may just buy the whole stack and cut it themselves.
Jean-Yves: These are unique models. There's no machine here. We are human beings. Look with the little pon pon. It's extremely rare, he's the only one doing it. And there the same, look, there are different sizes.
Claudia: This looks like a building we have in Italy, actually, in my region.
Jean-Yves: Oh, really?
Claudia: Yes. Do you know Alberobello? The trulli? It's this. Is there a difference among the tools they use?
Jean-Yves: Yes, there can be. I stop you. There's a striated side, a smooth side. Here it's small, here it's big. And each time the hand of the man or the woman works like this, like this, it depends. It's a job. Thank you.
Claudia: Is there a particular reason why you have these small shapes?
Jean-Yves: To do this? Because if we took a piece — that's it. Go on, do it. So, there are cracks everywhere, and here there's none. It's the quality of the texture and the visuals, the aesthetics actually. But we have done a lot of studies. We are butter-stamping scientists. So, currently the match is between Lucien the bamboozler and Fred the chewer.
Claudia: There's something in this butter.
Jean-Yves: My grandad had the same job, a long time ago, and I always heard him saying this job is hard, complicated, but I have a flaw. I always do the opposite of what I am told, and this way I can understand. And, in fact, I fell in love. Today, maybe 2% of the butter production is done with a baratte. The rest is done with centrifuges, butter cannons. We have to feed the many. It's very important. But I think that, look, if indeed in the place we're in we replaced all my staff, my mates with machines, we replaced all my staff, my mates with machines, but nothing would happen here. If I do this job it's also so that something happens. If there's nothing, I'm not interested. Amen.
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