A bakery in Peterhead has reinvented the much-loved north-east delicacy, the buttery/rowie, to make it healthier for customers.
Hame Bakery, which has two branches in the Buchan town, has revamped their original buttery recipe to create a new product to appeal to health conscious customers.
The family-owned business’ healthier buttery has 73% less saturated fat and 91% less salt than the original, making a huge difference to the product’s nutritional content.
The changes were made thanks to funding from the Healthier Bakery Fund, an initiative from Food and Drink Federation (FDF) Scotland and Food Standards Scotland (FSS) to help Scottish bakery businesses make their products healthier.
Traditionally made with flour, salt, yeast and a large amount of fat/lard, it is claimed that the beloved bake has fallen out of favour with younger people.
‘We’ve found young people are more focused on their health’
“There’s no question that butteries are very high in fat and salt, and we’ve found young people are more focused on their health,” explains Hame Bakery owner and baker Patrick Jackson.
“We used to make 50 tins of 12 dozen butteries just for our Saturday trade, but it has now fallen to about 20 tins, so we’ve seen a real shift which we’ve put down to an increased focus on health.”
Mr Jackson says that Hame Bakery is not afraid to try new things to meet consumer aspirations, which inspired the change.
“Our multi-seed bread is extremely popular and it has no added salt or sugar. So, we thought, why not create a buttery like this?”
The funding allowed the baker time and space to focus on recipe development, done in-house in Peterhead.
He said: “The main aim was to make a healthier buttery by incorporating wholegrain flour and more seeds, but we made real progress in reducing the fat.
“It was a lot of trial and error. I made multiple samples by simply going into major retailers and picking up different products and trialling the lighter fat alternatives.”
In addition to the reduction of fat and salt, dietary fibre has increased by 121%, with calories being reduced by 24%.
Mr Jackson added: We’ve been selling our healthier butteries now since January and we make about 10 dozen each week. It’s not the same taste, but we have a lot of repeat customers and if it is helping with people’s diet, then that is great.”
‘Fantastic work by Patrick and his team at Hame Bakery’
Head of public health nutrition at Food Standards Scotland, Laura Wilson said: “It’s important to enable businesses, like Hame Bakery, to have the time and space to try new things with an aim to improve the nutritional content of their products and, ultimately, the health of their customers.
FDF Scotland’s reformulation for health manager, Joanne Burns added: “The fantastic work by Patrick and his team at Hame Bakery in developing their better buttery highlights the amazing potential that the bakery industry has to make traditional recipes healthier.”
Conversation