History

The habit is a tax accident. The gabelle, the French salt tax, exempted Brittany from the fifteenth century onwards, so salt stayed cheap in the region long after it became a luxury elsewhere, and Breton dairies went on salting butter for preservation when the rest of France moved to sweet butter. Demi-sel carries between 0.5 and 3 percent salt; anything more is beurre salé. The best is churned slowly from cream ripened with lactic cultures overnight, then finished with fleur de sel from the Guérande pans so the crystals stay whole. In Rennes it goes on bread at the table, into the caramel and into the pan for every galette.

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Common allergens: Dairy

Make it at home

Yield 8Hands-on 30 minTotal 18 hrDifficulty Easy

Ingredients

  • 1 litre double cream, not ultra-pasteurised
  • 3 tbsp cultured buttermilk or live natural yoghurt
  • 8g fleur de sel de Guérande
  • Iced water for washing

Method

  1. Stir the buttermilk into the cream, cover loosely and leave at room temperature for 12 to 16 hours until it smells faintly tangy and has thickened.
  2. Chill the cultured cream to about 12C, then churn it in a stand mixer or food processor until it breaks into grains and buttermilk separates out.
  3. Drain off the buttermilk and keep it for pancakes.
  4. Tip the butter grains into a bowl of iced water and knead with a spatula, changing the water four or five times until it runs clear. Residual buttermilk is what turns butter rancid.
  5. Press out the last of the water, work in the fleur de sel so the crystals stay whole, and shape into a block.
  6. Wrap in parchment and chill. It keeps three weeks and improves for the first few days.

Tip from the editors. Wash it until the water runs completely clear. Every trace of buttermilk left in the butter cuts its keeping time by days.

Where to eat beurre demi-sel

Beurre demi-sel in Rennes

Marché des Lices ★ 4.9

€ Les Lices

The Marché des Lices has run in Rennes since 1622 and now packs close to 300 stallholders onto Place des Lices every Saturday, France's second-largest market.

TipThe galette-saucisse stands between the two halls fire up from sunrise; go before 11:00 to beat the queue that swallows the square.

Directions

Halles Centrales, La Criée ★ 4.4

€ Centre

The Halles Centrales put a daily covered market in the middle of Rennes, 28 fishmongers, cheesemongers, butchers and greengrocers under the Criée's 1922 roof.

TipThis is the everyday market when it is not Saturday, and Sunday 09:00 to 13:00 is the only food shopping left in the city that day; BioCrêp inside griddles a €3.50 organic galette-saucisse.

Directions

Le Fournil des Halles ★ 4.1

€ BakeryBreton family baking across three generationsCentreWalk-in only

Le Fournil des Halles bakes a three-generation kouign-amann recipe near the Halles Centrales in Rennes, alongside far breton and buckwheat galettes.

Worth the queueKouign-amann, plain or apple

TipTheir kouign-amann is sold in packaging that keeps it three weeks, the one Breton pastry that survives a suitcase.

Directions

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