Land o' Lakes Butter Quality is No Urban Myth

In reading on the Internet about cookies, I have seen numerous posts from people who say they do all their baking with Land o' Lakes butter. Who are these people? Do they work for the Land o' Lakes company, or what? It sure sounds like an urban myth to me. Why would one brand of butter be better than another?

Land o' Lakes butter tends to be a little more expensive, and so I started these cookie experiments using butter manufactured by Weyauwega Star Dairy. As you know, if you've followed my experiments, Weyauwega brand butter is no good for butter cookies. I switched to Crystal Farms butter and saw far better results. Crystal Farms gives good butter cookies with a long creaming time from 69 F. or so, but it fails in difficult situations such as being warmed to 74 degrees before creaming. That would make it pretty difficult to use in the summer, when the room temperature air is always above 74 degrees. You'd have to keep an eagle eye on it after you take it out of the refrigerator and make sure you are ready to proceed with the cookies as soon as it gets to 68-70 degrees. Not very practical.

Remembering the numerous references to Land o' Lakes butter, of course I tried a batch of cookies using Land o' Lakes unsalted butter, warmed to 74 degrees before creaming for two minutes, then mixing flour for two minutes. Wow, what great results!

And so I have to say, people who say Land o' Lakes butter is outstanding for baking are speaking more than an urban myth. It's truth, pure and simple. Its cost is slightly higher than "generic butter" such as from Weyauwega Star Dairy, but about the same cost as Crystal Farms butter, and its qualities produce great results when many other butters do not.

I am not one to find something that works and say "I'll never use anything else." I don't say that about Land o' Lakes butter, either. I plan on experimenting with some other butters. But Land o' Lakes is the standard against which I will measure other butters, from this point forward. If I find something better, I'll use it if I want, and I'll post it. But I am extremely impressed with Land o' Lakes butter!

The cookies I made were melt-in-your-mouth delicious, even the ones baked on the Wilton Everglide pan. That's a major breakthrough. With the cookies I made with six minutes' creaming from 69 F. with Crystal Farms butter, the cookies baked on the Williams-Sonoma Goldtouch Commercial Quality Cookie Sheet were great, but the ones on the Wilton pan were slightly harder. Still good, but definitely a different quality, and to my mind not as good as the ones baked on the Goldtouch pan. These cookies made with Land o' Lakes butter creamed from 74 F. for two minutes were even top-notch when baked on the Wilton pan! The cookies on the Wilton pan were flatter and "bumpier", but the texture was exactly the same as the ones from the Goldtouch pan. That's an absolute first, and the overall results were a huge improvement over the cookies made under exactly the same conditions with Crystal Farms butter.

I am not sure if they are better than the six-minute creaming cookies made with Crystal Farms butter. I'll have to make some more of those for a direct comparison in the near future. I think maybe they are a tiny bit better. The main thing about the Land o' Lakes butter is that it seems to provide good results under varied conditions, some of which cause cookies made with other butters to fail miserably. In the winter, I wouldn't mind using Crystal Farms butter and creaming for a long time, since I do have cookie sheets that produce great results with it. But Crystal Farms and Land o' Lakes butter are basically the same price, so unless my direct comparison actually shows Crystal Farms cookies taste better - which is possible, when I get to it - I'd probably just buy Land o' Lakes.

Am I exaggerating about how good the cookies came out with Land o' Lakes butter? I took some of these cookies in to work. A guy sent me an e-mail about them. He wrote, "Dem cookies are damn good. Outstanding, even. But they don't do much for my girlish figure." (Ha ha ha.) I was pleased. :-) I told him they don't do much for mine, either. But it goes to show, yeah, those cookies are pretty darned good!

For the mundane measurements:

Starting Temperature:
74.2 F.

Ending Temperature:
72.7 F. (change of -1.5)

Weight of creamed butter/sugar, not including weight of cup:
204g

Percent volume increase during creaming:
26.5%

Weight of dough after mixing, not including weight of cup:
229g

Percent volume increase during through mixing step:
7.9%

Since the next several experiments are going to follow exactly the same procedure, here's what I did for today's experiment and the last experiment with Crystal Farms unsalted butter. It's the same procedure I've been following since I started in January, so you can use it for reference for earlier experiments as well, except for where they note explicit procedural variations.

1. Get 4 sticks of unsalted butter warming up from refrigerator temperature.
2. Measure 405 grams (about 2 cups) of C&H Granulated Sugar.
3. Stir 4+ cups of unsifted Pillsbury Best All-Purpose Flour in a bowl.
4. Weigh out 495 grams (about four level cups) of the stirred flour into a second bowl.
5. Add 0.5 teaspoon baking powder to the weighed flour and stir about 40 times briskly with a whisk.
6. Sift the weighed flour and baking powder into a third bowl using the trigger-handle triple sifter. 7. When the butter has come to 74 degrees, record the temperature and proceed.
8. Using my Sunbeam Mixmaster, beat the butter in the large bowl at Level 2 (folding dry ingredients) for 15 seconds.
9. Beat the butter at Level 7 (creaming speed) for 30 seconds.
10. Add sugar. Beat at Level 2 for 15 seconds.
11. Cream butter and sugar at Level 7 for two minutes.
12. 60 seconds before the end of the creaming time, add 1 teaspoon Durkee Imitation Vanilla.
13. Measure the temperature of the butter/sugar mixture at the end of the creaming period.
14. Measure the weight of one level cup of the butter/sugar mixture at the end of the creaming period.
15. Add about two cups of the flour to the butter. Mix at level 2 for 20 seconds.
16. Add the remaining two cups of flour. Mix at level 2 for 2 minutes.
17. Measure the weight of one level cup of the dough.
18. Divide the dough into several equal portions. (Three equal portions by weight is about 435 grams each).
19. Form each portion into a roll about 9 inches long, wrapped in plastic wrap.
20. Refrigerate all the rolls for at least 1 hour, not longer than three hours.
21. 30 minutes before baking, turn the oven on to 350 F.
22. Slice the rolls into quarter-inch slices.
23. Bake on my Wilton and Williams-Sonoma Goldtouch Commercial Quality Cookie Sheet pans to the point of crispness.
24. After the cookies are cooled, save several samples in a plastic bag in the freezer.
25. Take notes on the resulting cookies.