what to do if you only have salted butter
Do you ever circular up all of the exciting, far-reaching ingredients you lot need for a baking project (Rooibos tea leaves! Golden syrup! Prune butter!), completely overlooking the basics? Plainly accept butter, you lot think.
Except you render home, flushed on the high that is tracking down goat milk, only to realize you accept salted butter, and the recipe calls for unsalted. Or the other way around. So it's time to get creative: Can they be used interchangeably by adding or reducing the corporeality of additional salt used?
The short answer is yeah, sort of—read on to find out the nitty gritty.
First, it'due south of import to know the differences between salted and unsalted butter:
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Since salt acts as a preservative, the shelf life of salted butter is actually longer than that of its unsalted analogue (near 5 months and 3 months, respectively).
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While the standard estimate is that salted butter contains 1/4 teaspoon of table salt per 4 ounces of butter (1 stick), salt levels actually range widely from brand to brand.
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The type of salt in salted butter varies widely, too—y'all can notice brands made with body of water salt, fleur de sel, and regular erstwhile tabular array salt.
Cooks' Illustrated lists another problematic difference: "Salted butter almost always contains more water than unsalted butter." In baking, water tin interfere with gluten development, so the less h2o, the better. In fact, when Cooks' Illustrated tested biscuits made with unsalted and salted butter, tasters noticed a difference not only in flavor, but in texture. The additional water in salted butter produced samples that tasters institute "mushy" and "pasty."
To test out all of these claims, I made two batches of simple saccharide cookies (a recipe that calls for unsalted butter) and two batches of David Lebovitz's Salted Butter Chocolate Bit Cookies (which calls for salted). For both, I made ane version with Country O'Lakes unsalted butter, the other with State O'Lakes salted butter.
The Peachy Sugar Cookie Test:
When testing the sugar cookies, I was interested in differences when common salt levels are more than or less equal, so I did a bit of math (ugh) and worked out how much salt I needed to add for the salted butter version.
The original recipe with unsalted butter calls for 1/2 teaspoon of common salt, so I needed to add .31 teaspoon to the salted version. They make a dissever spoon for that, right?
There wasn't a discernible difference between the two doughs, but once baked, the cookies were visibly different. The ones with unsalted butter were more gold with a crispier edge (and more closely resembled the photograph attached to the recipe). The salted butter ones were pale and a bit doughier in appearance.
But how'd they taste?
Tasters found the unsalted butter version crispier, crumblier, and the right corporeality of chewy. They likewise found them saltier. Tasters constitute the salted version cake-ier and overall chewier. Simply when tasters guessed which cookie was which, near all of them were wrong.
More than: Nosotros tin't turn downwardly a skilful butter sense of taste examination.
The Chocolate Fleck Cookie Examination:
David Lebovitz, the beloved baker and blogger, has written about his fondness for baking with salted butter. He uses it in chocolate sauce, in ice foam, and in chocolate chip cookies. He prefers the European-style butter flecked with fleur de sel or grey ocean salt.
Lebovitz says that butter has a more "distinct buttery sense of taste." Our co-founder Amanda Hesser agrees, with a caveat:
"I [apply salted butter] when I want to add a fully savory chemical element to a cake. I used to add together salt separately but found that it doesn't always blend in. In some cookies and desserts, it's great to come across the crepitation of a table salt crystal, but it doesn't piece of work well universally."
Lebovitz seems to take been looking for just that—the crunch of a common salt crystal—in these cookies, which call for a combination of salted butter and flaky sea salt. For the unsalted version, I went with the standard estimate (1/four teaspoon) to compensate for the salted butter. In both, I added i/2 teaspoon Maldon common salt.
How'd they taste?
Tasters found the version with the unsalted butter a little more than golden, a little doughier, and a piffling more universally salted. Folks plant the salted version richer and more than buttery, but ultimately liked the unsalted butter version better.
Just similar last time, most tasters incorrectly identified which cookie contained which butter. Why might that exist? As i taster told me, "I only like salted butter meliorate, and so I'm looking for the saltier cookie."
Bottom line: All the cookies worked, but information technology'due south all-time to utilise unsalted butter if the recipe calls for it—and mayhap fifty-fifty if it doesn't.
The Takeaways:
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In both tests, the bulk of tasters preferred the unsalted butter cookies, which near of them thought were the salted butter version. This may be because the corporeality of salt was more precise in the unsalted butter cookies. Salt does more than just contribute "saltiness"—it brings out flavors of other ingredients, so measurements are important here.
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CI was right: The cookies made with salted butter had a noticeably different texture than ones made with unsalted butter, particularly in the sugar cookie test. This is likely due to the differences in water content, which can range from 10 to xviii%. Fat levels tin can affect h2o content, likewise (cheque out Kim Severson'due south findings comparing butterfat in the SFGate). Simply since I used Land O'Lakes butter—which is 80% fatty in both the salted and unsalted types—variations in butterfat shouldn't have afflicted water volume.
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It was pretty hard to find a baking recipe that called for salted butter, suggesting that recipe writers prefer the command that comes with using unsalted. Writes Lebovitz:
"I'm using [salted butter] more and more in blistering, although I have to temper that with the fact that salted butter varies wildly from place to place, then in nigh recipes, I still by and large call for unsalted butter."
Recollect that our exam was restricted to cookies. Differences in flavor—and particularly texture—may be more dramatic if you attempt more than structurally precarious cakes, pastries, etc.
If attempting a Napoleon Cake, for case, you should probably merely follow the directions exactly.
But if you're in a compression, go ahead and sub one for the other. Bank check the label for diet information or hop online to determine the sodium levels y'all're working with. It'southward a tedious footstep, simply the standard advice to "just get out out the added salt" when subbing in salted butter tin't exist followed considering the variations between brands of butter.
1. Salted Butter Brioche
This puffy, fluffy wonder is deeply brown and crusty (read: flavorful!) on the outside, and perfectly plush on the within. It's mild and lightly sweet in flavor, with a richness and complexity from the salted butter. Toast up a slice and slather it with chocolate-hazelnut spread, jam, or—yes—more salted butter plus crunchy salt sprinkled on top.
two. Brown Butter–Bourbon Rice Krispies Treats
Pillowy marshmallow fluff meets spicy, nutty, boozy bourbon meets crunchy Rice Krispies cereal meets earthy salted browned butter to cut through it all. What's not to like? When yous make these (detect that's non an "if"), catch a pot big enough to allow you to practise all the needed browning, stirring, and mixing. Also bring some elbow grease, and your sweet tooth.
3. Dearest-Butter Scrap Shortbread Cookies
Salted butter goes in the dough and the coat that gets drizzled on top of these crumbly, dear-scented beauties. Even better: A salubrious dose of crushed potato fries crown the glaze, adding some other pleasant hit of salt to the mix. In fact, these cookies are inspired by the Korean snack-food favorite, Dearest Butter Spud Fries.
4. JoJo's Biscuits
These biscuits are the definition of rich: They're enriched with eggs to make them heartier and tender, and packed with salted butter to give them their incomparable flavor. They besides snuggle up in a pan together to allow their tops to get crispy-crunchy and browned, but let them become super-fluffy and light with all that steam buildup. You'll want to eat ii (or more!) of these at in one case: one, with more salted better and your favorite fruit jam; the other, smothered with peppery gravy.
Do you lot take whatsoever tips or thoughts on swapping unsalted butter for salted? Exercise you secretly always baked with salted butter? Tell us in the comments!
Source: https://food52.com/blog/15584-can-you-swap-salted-and-unsalted-butter-in-baking
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