Red Fruit Crumble With Bordier Buckwheat Butter

Three ingredients make the topping, one block of butter carries the flavour, and the oven does the rest in half an hour. This is a straight red fruit crumble, but Maison Bordier builds the rubble with their Buckwheat Butter, which is shot through with roasted buckwheat. The grain gives the topping a toasted, faintly nutty edge that plain butter cannot reach, and it sits well against tart summer berries. Easy enough for a weeknight, good enough for a table of six.

At a glance

Difficulty: Easy
Serves: 6
Active time: Not specified by Maison Bordier. Rubbing the topping and cutting the fruit is the whole of the hands-on work.
Cook: 30 minutes at 210°C (410°F)
Key ingredient: 125 g Bordier Buckwheat Butter

Why this works

Buckwheat, or sarrasin, is a Breton staple. It is the flour in a galette de sarrasin and it has fed Brittany for centuries, so putting it into Breton butter was an obvious pairing that nobody had made until a Breton chef suggested it to Jean-Yves Bordier in 2016. The butter carries roasted buckwheat, and roasting is what matters: it brings out something between toasted hazelnut and dark bread. In a crumble that reads as depth. A standard flour-sugar-butter topping tastes mostly of sugar and browning, while this one tastes of grain.

The technique is the oldest one in baking. Cold butter is rubbed into flour and sugar until the mixture looks like breadcrumbs, which coats the flour particles in fat and stops them forming gluten. Scattered loose over the fruit and hit with a hot 210°C oven, those crumbs set into a sandy, open topping rather than a solid lid. Meanwhile the fruit underneath collapses and gives up its juice, and the contrast between the two is the entire point of a crumble.

Ingredients

Enough for one dish serving six.

Ingredient	Metric	US
Flour	150 g	5.3 oz, about 1¼ cups
Caster sugar	150 g	5.3 oz superfine sugar, about ¾ cup
Bordier Buckwheat Butter	125 g	4.4 oz, exactly 1 block
Red fruit	800 g	1 lb 12 oz, about 1¾ lb
Lemon (optional)	1	1

Method

Step 1: Rub the crumble together

Preheat the oven to 210°C (410°F). Pour the flour and the sugar into a bowl. Add the butter in small pieces and work it in well, until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.

Step 2: Fill the dish and bake

Wash the fruit and cut the larger pieces down. Put them in an ovenproof dish and scatter the crumble mixture over the top. Bake for 30 minutes. Take it out and leave it to cool.

Step 3: Finish with lemon zest

Grate a little lemon zest over the crumble before serving. This step is optional.

Tips from our kitchen

Use the butter cold, straight from the refrigerator. Cut it into small cubes and work quickly with your fingertips. Soft butter smears into the flour and gives you a paste that bakes into a hard sheet instead of loose crumbs.
Stop rubbing at breadcrumbs. The moment the mixture starts clumping into a dough you have gone too far. Some larger lumps are welcome, since they bake into the crunchy pieces people dig for.
Do not press the topping down. Scatter it loosely. A compacted layer traps steam from the fruit underneath and the underside turns to paste.
Frozen berries work, but drain them. Thaw first and tip off the liquid, or the fruit releases far more juice than a shallow dish can absorb and the crumble floats.
Watch the color near the end. 210°C is a hot oven and the topping browns fast. If it is dark before 30 minutes are up, lay a sheet of foil loosely over the top and let the fruit finish cooking.
Let it cool as instructed. Straight from the oven the fruit juices are thin and scalding. Twenty minutes of cooling lets them thicken, which is when the crumble holds together on a spoon.

How to serve it

Warm, not hot, with cold cream poured over it or a scoop of vanilla ice cream on the side. The temperature contrast is the whole pleasure of a crumble, and the buckwheat in the topping comes through more clearly once it has cooled a little. Leftovers reheat well in a low oven, though the topping softens overnight. If you want to compare the Bordier blocks against the other French butters we carry, start with the French churned butter collection.

Where to buy Bordier Buckwheat Butter in the US

The French Pantry ships Bordier butter across the United States in insulated overnight packaging, straight from the workshop in Brittany.

Churned Buckwheat Butter by Bordier (4.4 oz): hand-churned butter worked with roasted buckwheat, two Breton staples in one block, created in 2016 at a Breton chef's suggestion.

You can also browse the full Maison Bordier collection for the rest of the flavoured range and the plain salted and unsalted blocks.

Frequently asked questions

How much Bordier Buckwheat Butter do I need?

One block. Bordier butter is sold in 125 g blocks, which is 4.4 oz, and this crumble uses exactly 125 g with nothing left over.

Can I substitute a different butter?

Yes, though you lose the roasted grain flavour that gives this version its character. The plain salted block makes a very good conventional crumble, and Madagascar Vanilla works well with berries too. Keep the weight at 125 g.

What counts as red fruit?

The recipe calls for 800 g of red fruit without specifying, which is deliberate: use whatever is good, whether that is raspberries, strawberries, redcurrants, cherries or a mix. Cut the larger fruits into pieces as the method says.

How should I store Bordier butter?

Keep it refrigerated in its wrapper and use it by the date on the pack. It freezes well: wrap the block tightly, then thaw it overnight in the refrigerator before you bake with it.

Does the butter need to stay refrigerated in transit?

Bordier butter is a fresh, hand-churned product and ships cold. It travels in an insulated box with coolant and should go into the refrigerator as soon as you unpack it.

Can I make the topping in advance?

Yes. Rub it together, keep it in a covered container in the refrigerator, and scatter it over the fruit straight from cold when you are ready to bake. Cold crumble mix behaves better in the oven than mix that has warmed up on the counter.