A FAMILY-owned bakery has reinvented the much-loved buttery in response to customers' growing concerns about health.
Hame Bakery in Peterhead has reformulated its original recipe to create a new buttery to appeal to their more health-aware customers.
The North East delicacy, also known as a rowie or an Aberdeen roll, is a savory almost scone like roll and is traditionally made with flour, yeast, salt, and a large amount of lard/fat.
The family-owned business's healthier buttery has 73% less saturated fat and 91% less salt than the original recipe, making a huge difference to the product’s nutritional content.
Patrick Jackson, owner and baker at Hame Bakery, says he created the new recipe through trial and error and by incorporating wholegrain flour and seeds.
He said: “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.
“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.
“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.
“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.”
Hames Bakery were able to create their new formula through funding from the Healthier Bakery Fund, which is an initiative from Food and Drink Federation (FDF) Scotland and Food Standards Scotland (FSS) to help Scottish bakery businesses make their products healthier.
Food Standards Scotland’s Head of Public Health Nutrition, 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.
“Evidence shows that reformulation, for example by reducing portion size, calories, or improving nutritional content by increasing fibre, is one of the most effective ways industry can help improve dietary health in Scotland.”
Joanne Burns, reformulation for health manager, FDF Scotland, also praised Hame Bakery and their trailblazing butteries as she said:
“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.
“Many of Scotland’s favourite foods are produced by our high street bakers from butteries and scotch pies to empire biscuits and yum yums.”
