Rising butter prices give European consumers and bakers a bad taste

PARIS (AP) — Pastry chef Arnaud Delmontel rolls out dough for croissants and pain au chocolat that later emerge golden and fragrant from the oven in his Paris patisserie.

The price for the butter so essential to the pastries has shot up in recent months, by 25% since September alone, Delmontel says. But he is refusing to follow some competitors who have started making their croissants with margarine.

“It’s a distortion of what a croissant is,” Delmontel said. "A croissant is made with butter.”

One of life’s little pleasures — butter spread onto warm bread or imbuing cakes and seared meats with its rich flavor — has gotten more expensive across Europe in the last year. After a stretch of post-pandemic inflation that the war in Ukraine worsened, the booming cost of butter is another blow for consumers with holiday treats to bake.