Baking 101: Why We Use Unsalted Butter

Let’s talk about butter! It’s my go-to. It’s my boo. It’s my sweetheart.

I’m not shy about sharing my affection for butter, but you may have noticed in the recipes here  that I’m very specific about how I like my butter.  Sometimes melted and browned.  Sometimes cold and cubed.  Sometimes beaten with sugar and egg.  Always though… most almost always.. UNSALTED! Yea, I get opinionated about my butter. We should talk about why.

Butter is my go-to fat in the kitchen.  Olive oil is nice.  Coconut oil is lovely.  Butter gets the job done!

Butter is typically made from cow’s milk and consists of mostly butterfats.  Low-fat buttes are suspicious, at best.  Butter is generally about 80% fat, with the remaining 20% consisting of water and milk solids.

You have a choice when you go to the grocery:  salted or unsalted butter.  If you’re thinking about slathering your butter on a warm baguette, you’ll want to reach for the salted butter.  If you’re baking a cobbler, you’ll most definitely want to reach for the unsalted butter.

Here’s why:

Most importantly: unsalted butter ensures that you can control the amount of salt you add to your cakes, cookies and Fig and Almond Breakfast Cake.  Different companies add different amounts of salt to their butter.  How are we to know how salty our butter is, and how we should adjust the salt in the recipe?  It’s too much of a guessing game.  Removing the salt from the butter equation puts us in control of salting. Control is very important when it comes to flavor.

When a recipe calls for unsalted butter, that means that the salt levels in the recipe account for no other salt source.  If all you have salted butter, try cutting the instructed salt amount in half.

Also, salt is a preservative.  Salted butter has a longer shelf life than unsalted butter.  That means that unsalted butter is typically fresher.

Salt can mask flavors!  We may not be able to taste or smell if our butter is off because clever clever salt can mask funky taste and odors.  Tricky.

Does butter really go bad? Heck yes it does!  Unsalted butter lasts about 1 month in the refrigerator.  Salted butter lasts for just over 3 months in the refrigerator (that’s so long, right?).  If you think your butter might be off, give it a good sniff.  The nose always knows.  Also, slice your butter.  Is the inside the same color as the outside… or is the outside a darker casing around the butter?  Bad butter is two different colors.

What happens if I use salted butter in baked goods?

Well… the world will end, and that’s that.

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