Local food group Slow Food Aberdeen City and Shire are bringing back the World Buttery Championship.
The event will take place on Thursday 21st November 2024 at NESCOL’s Aberdeen City Campus and this year there will be two competitions - Best Retail Buttery where top bakers will take part in a live bake off to find the best butteries available for sale in the world. As well as this there will be Best Home Bake Buttery, which is open to all and will also include a live bake off to find the best home baked butteries in the world.
Both amateurs and professionals will compete in celebration of the humble buttery, a unique breakfast item associated with Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire.
Outwith the region, the buttery (also known as a rowie or roll) is virtually unheard of, but historically it was taken onboard by fishermen sailing from ports up and down the North East coast.
The traditional buttery was a crispy, flaky and buttery, salted bread product which was favoured by local boats because of its high fat and salt content which gave it a long shelf life.
Since then the buttery has changed significantly, as event coordinator Martin Gillespie explained: “Over the years the traditional buttery recipe has been altered.
“In many cases, the commercial production of butteries has seen the original ingredients of butter and lard replaced with margarine and palm oil. Not only does this affect the taste and texture of the buttery but the use of non-sustainable palm oil has a negative environmental impact.”
These changes have prompted Slow Food to classify the traditional North East delicacy as an ‘endangered heritage food’ in their Ark of Taste.
Slow Food is an international movement which raises awareness of local and global food issues such as this and champions small-scale agriculture and artisan food production.
Wendy Barrie, Slow Food Scotland’s leader for the Ark of Taste described the project as a valuable record of our food heritage saying that: “The Ark of Taste was created by Slow Food to catalogue the existence of endangered foods and associated food culture lest they are lost or forgotten forever.”
The World Buttery Championship was launched in 2018 to highlight the buttery’s new status and to raise awareness of the Slow Food organisation.
Martin Gillespie added: “We are delighted that the buttery has been entered into the Ark of Taste as it ensures that we do not lose or forget the culture and traditions surrounding it.
“With the World Buttery Championship we hope to promote the traditional buttery recipe in order to help preserve the heritage of the buttery and to remind people what a buttery should really taste like.”
The competition will be judged in a blind taste test after the live bake off by a panel of specially selected judges including hospitality professionals and Slow Food members to find the World’s Best Butteries.
Applicants can apply on the Slow Food website where full details of the competition can be found.
