The best of both worlds : Bordier butter

Name:

Maison Bordier (formerly Beurre Bordier) 

Date of birth:

1985

Place of birth:

Saint‑Malo, Brittany

Origin:

In the Bordier family, I present the son, Jean-Yves. His parents were dairy and cheese merchants at Parisian markets. Very early on, while he dreamed of becoming a sailor, Jean-Yves plunged into another Breton obsession: butter. Already steeped in those tools and gestures he had seen since he was very small, he learned the family trade and in 1985 took over the dairy « La Maison du Beurre » in Saint‑Malo. The shop was 60 years old; he was 30. And Mr. Bordier is keen (about butter) to carry on the artisanal gesture he observed during his apprenticeship. A nearly vanished practice that is still perpetuated here — the manual reworking of butter carried out by the old 19th-century butter makers.

Production : 

No good butter without good milk. The soft churned butter the house uses as its raw ingredient is produced by the family dairy Olga, with milk collected within a 100-kilometer radius around the workshop, between Brittany, Normandy and Pays de la Loire. Then the magic happens. The noble, ecru-colored mass, just separated from the cream the day before, is reworked by hand in a wooden mixer, pressed until it takes on a supple texture.

“With each pass, the lump of butter unfolds like a fan and gradually softens. The bond between man and machine begins like a hand-to-hand struggle and ends like a dance, in a gesture that is at once physical and sensual.” - Maison Bordier - 

Spread, flattened, softened, the butter releases its aromas. Then comes the final, almost poetic step: sprinkling salt by hand, which allows the remaining water to be drawn out. Jean-Yves Bordier nicely sums up this gesture: “when my butter cries, it is because it sings.” The pats are then seasoned with flavors that have built the house's reputation, then shaped by hand, into rectangles, cones, squares…

Anecdote : 

It is said that the success story begins when Michelin-starred chef Éric Briffard, then head chef of the Plaza Athénée, accidentally discovered this workshop during a stay in Finistère. Legend has it that he ordered more than 800 mini butters shaped by Jean-Yves Bordier for his palace. Enamored with this Breton gem, the same spell would soon capture other great names in gastronomy. Alain Senderens, Marc Veyrat, Éric Fréchon, Alain Passard, Yves Camdeborde… the great names of French gastronomy succumb one after another to Beurre Bordier. Guy Savoy went even further, asking Jean-Yves Bordier to create a bespoke recipe for him.

Star flavor : 

Like some major culinary inventions born almost by chance, from the Tarte Tatin to the Fontainebleau, Bordier's flavored butters also have their little story. In 1986, Jean-Yves returned from the market with his catch of the day: a brill laid on a bed of seaweed. He then prepared a duxelles with the green gold which he mixed into semi-salted butter to make the little squares melt over the fish. The harmony between the briny notes of the seaweed and the comfort of the butter immediately struck him as obvious. The first flavored butter from the Bordier house was born: seaweed butter, which has since become one of its most famous signatures. Little surprise for a child who dreamed of going to sea.