Ina Garten's Favorite Way To Eat Toast Is Just As Bougie As You'd Think

It's no secret that Ina Garten, aka the Barefoot Contessa, loves the finer things in life. However, that doesn't mean she makes everything from scratch or dines out for every meal. Often classy, but simple is her go-to. For instance, she's frequently spoken about eating a similar breakfast and lunch every day. One of her favorite morning meals, when Ina isn't eating her favorite brand of oatmeal, is simply toast with butter. But, since it's Ina, she's not spreading her toast with just any butter. As she told Julia Louis-Dreyfus on her podcast "Wiser Than Me," her favorite morning spread is a French-crafted butter from a renowned cheesemaker called Rodolphe Le Meunier Beurre de Baratte, combined with a sprinkle of shaved sea salt.

While Ina tells Julia her approach to food is to create something simple and delicious during the podcast episode, she certainly doesn't settle for boring. Even though her breakfast consists of basic toast, this special butter imported from France elevates it to another echelon.

While arguably Ina would love to be dining on fresh baguettes in Paris at her favorite cafe, this French-made butter likely brings her back to those moments when she can't be there in person. Beurre de Baratte is a traditional style of making butter that involves churning milk from cows from Normandy by hand in a special wooden churn. Since this is a cultured butter with additional cream added in, the butter ferments slightly, which gives it a tangy versus strictly creamy flavor and results in a fat-heavy, decadent butter. The butter is then also shaped by hand and embossed with an adorable 3-D cow.

If you'd like to breakfast like Ina, this butter is available online and in specialty shops. It typically sells for around $15 for 250 grams, which is approximately half a pound or two sticks of butter. If you want to complete the meal, add a sprinkle of Maldon sea salt, one of Ina's favorite salts.

Of course, fancy French butter isn't necessary for all types of kitchen tasks. Ina has butters of choice for everyday cooking and baking. If she is baking Ina can't get enough of the widely available Cabot unsalted butter. However, she stresses that there are many good types of butter in the supermarket. When choosing one, she cautions home bakers to use unsalted because varying salt levels can change a baked good significantly.

When Ina makes one of her favorite pastas, she has been known to swirl in a tablespoon or two of white truffle butter. She is a huge fan of the pungent flavor of white truffles but never uses the oil, which often isn't made with real truffles. Urbani white truffle butter is her go-to because of the real pieces of truffle within it. She'll even freeze several tubs of the butter for future use. When she's whipping up an Irish-inspired dish she often recommends a butter like Kerrygold as a spread, a popular butter from Ireland that is also widely available in supermarkets. But if you want to start your day a la Ina, Beurre de Baratte is the way to go.