Is it okay to use salted butter in baking?

I read a Twitter thread the other day in which the writer unleashed a tirade of complaints about recipe requirements, including a rant against unsalted butter, which he called “trash.” It is obvious that he prefers baking with salted butter, but most bakers disagree. But does using salted butter in place of unsalted really make a difference? The answer is…maybe. 

As with most cooking disputes, you will find people on either side of this argument. Professional bakers like Jeremy Lee, head chef of London’s Quo Vadis, insist that salted butter results in inferior baked goods. “It has a fatty quality when cooked and brings an unsavoury quality to baking, which is hard to define; I just wouldn’t go there,” he says.  Additionally, the salt level between brands can vary, leading to unpredictability. Author Alison Roman says: “Five grams of salt is always going to be five grams of salt. I want to take out the variables, and salted butter is a variable.” 

Another factor to consider is the water content of the butter. Unsalted butter has less water than salted butter, which is usually better for baked goods. According to Cook’s Illustrated, “butter with a low water content is preferred, since excess water can interfere with the development of gluten.” Too much gluten can lead to tough pie crusts and dense cakes. 

Unsalted butter is generally fresher than salted butter too, for the obvious reason that salt is a preservative, which can mask off odors or flavors. There is a caveat to this: if you shop at a store that has low turnover on unsalted butter, it can go off while sitting in the refrigerated case.  

Some bakers are ambivalent about using salted or unsalted butter. Felicity Cloake, for example, generally uses salted butter because that is what she has on hand. She does not think it makes that much difference in baking. “If you take a Victoria sponge or shortcrust pastry made with salted butter, the salt is not going to be the dominant flavour,” she says. 

So what is the verdict? As with most things in cooking, it depends on what you are making, and your tolerance for variables. People may notice the difference, but probably only if you have a side-by-side comparison, which is what Cook’s Illustrated did. They used the same brand of butter, both unsalted and salted, to make brownies and drop biscuits. They said “tasters noticed that samples made with salted butter were a little mushy and pasty; they preferred the texture of baked goods made with unsalted butter.” 

In our house unsalted butter is the reigning champ because I bake more than I cook, and most of the recipes I use call for unsalted butter. Since I don’t want to deal with having two types of butter on hand I use unsalted for all purposes. When I spread it on toast I grind a bit of sea salt over it, a combination I find to be superior to using salted butter. How about you?