# Pastry Margarine



## njabulo (Mar 8, 2011)

Howdy Folks!

You were all so extremely helpful with my last question, I was hoping I could pick your collective brain a second time. Business is going fairly well and we're making a lot of puff pastry! We currently use butter for the pastry (who can resist!), but we're looking into reducing the costs a bit.

_*Does anyone has experience working with pastry margarine?*_ How does it effect the _*taste and quality*_ of the puff pastry?

Our supplier will not breakup the case and before I buy 22 lbs of the stuff to test on our products, I was hoping to get a little bit of feedback!

Cheers,

-Steve


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## lentil (Sep 8, 2003)

I'm not a pastry chef, but I am a consumer..  I would much prefer to pay the higher price for butter in any pastry than save a few cents for pastry made with  margarine.. I have a cafe/bakery and we only use butter.  It is expensive- we pay $93 a for 36#, but the quality of our baked goods is far superior in taste to other places.  I know my customers would rather pay a higher price for baked goods made with butter.  Just my opinion....


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## panini (Jul 28, 2001)

Hi Steve,

It's great to hear business is going well.

I'm going to put flavor as the taste of the product.

I'm going to put quality as the appearance.

The flavor is usually artificial. I think a good portion of population can recognize this over the natural butter.

Some qualities are that the Marg. will blend well with the dough.

Makes for easier lamination. Good plasticity, adds some lift in the over. It has

a higher burn point.

I think that switching should depend on what your final product is. If you are using this as a base or a vessal

for other ingredients it will take some adjusting.

Bakers margarine is usually used in doughs that are flavored like, cardamon in danish dough.

I think if you are seriously considering changing I would go with a straight puff shortening to start.

Where are you purchasing your butter? Some bakery supply houses will sell frozen butter cheaper. I have yet to find

a difference when used in doughs.

Are you using 1# blocks? You can usually get 50# cubes for a cheaper price.

HTH's

panini


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## blwilson2039 (Aug 26, 2010)

Good points above, and you might want to consider cutting the real butter with some of the margarine if you have to rather than substituting it completely. I have to agree that the taste will be greatly affected. Nothing beats butter for flavor. And don't forget, if your costs rise, you might have to absorb that into the final products' price. Difficult balancing act if you have a lot of repeat customers who are used to your current pricing.


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## panini (Jul 28, 2001)

um, blwilson,

I king of disagree with cutting with margarine. The flavor of the margarine will overpower the butter taste.

If anything you can cut with shortening but why waste the butter.

pan


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## blwilson2039 (Aug 26, 2010)

Panini, I only suggested the margarine if that's their only option for cutting costs. I did say in my post, _"I have to agree that the taste will be greatly affected. Nothing beats butter for flavor."_

I wouldn't consider using margarine in anything. I can't stand the taste. I agree that shortening has a more neutral flavor, but it will dilute the butter flavor.

Butter is better.


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## panini (Jul 28, 2001)

bl

My point was the marg. has such an atrificial flavor you lose the real  butter flavor altogether. You might as well go marg. all the way. That's all. pan


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## lentil (Sep 8, 2003)

blwilson2039 said:


> Good points above, and you might want to consider cutting the real butter with some of the margarine if you have to rather than substituting it completely. I have to agree that the taste will be greatly affected. Nothing beats butter for flavor. And don't forget, if your costs rise, you might have to absorb that into the final products' price. Difficult balancing act if you have a lot of repeat customers who are used to your current pricing.


Even worse if you have customers used to your current quality. It would be easier to adjust the price to reflect the cost of butter than it would be to rebuild a customer base when your currrent ones are discouraged by the difference in taste.


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## chauncey (Aug 28, 2012)

lentil is spot on!  Letting your customers know that price increases of your products are due to the price increase of your quality ingerediants keeps us coming back.for what we expect.


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## jcakes (Feb 18, 2007)

Investigate the cost savings you'd get from buying a 50# cube of butter rather than buying the individual 1# cubes, it will help.  You can also look into what your total dairy spending was and use it to see if you can negotiate rates for next year (you know this year you used 8000 pounds of butter) and see if that can get you a lower rate for next year.  Or compare what buying that amount in single pound bricks versus buying the 50 pound blocks and hopefully that can help.


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