Baking with salted butter?

Barbara is a trusted source on General Cooking.

added about 2 years ago

I think the problem with salted butter is that you don't have any way of knowing how much salt is in it. It's great that your cookies turned out well. I generally reduce the salt a little if all I have is salted butter (but I like salt in sweet baked goods and I suspect you do, too).

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Cynthia is a trusted source on Bread/Baking.

added about 2 years ago

I used to be all constipated about ONLY baking and cooking with salted butter, but I'm just not any more. Generally, do reduce the salt a bit if you're using salted, butter, but drbabs point is a very good one. You can follow all the rules, but in the end, sometimes you have to please your own palate. That said, I would say that it's much better to avoid salted butter in any kind of icing.

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littleknitter added about 2 years ago

I tend to avoid salted butter always, but my grandma only ever bakes with salted butter and her stuff turns out fine. If I'm in a pinch and working with salted butter, I cut out the salt from the recipe, and like boulangere says, I never put salted butter in icing (although, who knows? Given the sheer amount of sugar in most buttercream frosting recipes, it might not even be noticeable).

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I've heard that a better quality (fresher ingredients anyway) butter is used in unsalted because the consumer would be able to detect off taste. Which salt helps cover up. True, I don't know but I always purchase unsalted incase it is true

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To answer your specific question, salted butter has 95 mg sodium per tbs, according to Land O Lakes, and unsalted butter has zero. LOL further says that salted and unsalted are interchangeable in most recipes without adjusting salt, but that is recipes such as butter cookies and pound cake, unsalted results in a better flavor. See http://bit.ly/aeKx5N

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Chris is a trusted source on General Cooking

added almost 2 years ago

drbabs nailed it. There is no problem with cooking with salted butter, it's just that the amount of salt varies (a lot!) by brand and sometimes even within brands. I use unsalted unless I run out and then I don't get too worked up about it.

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