Do You Use Salted or Unsalted Butter for Baking?

Butter for Baking: Unsalted or Salted?

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by Renae Chiovaro on November 14, 2013

There are two types of real butter that you can buy; salted and unsalted. Salted butter has a longer refrigerator life since the salt acts as a preservative. However, unsalted butter still has a pretty long life of about 3 months. So the question is, what type of butter do you use for baking?

The baking rule is always use Unsalted butter. Even if the recipe doesn’t specify unsalted or salted butter, you should always lean towards unsalted butter. The reason is that most baking recipes call for the addition of salt. Manufacturers put differing amounts of salt in their salted butter. If you used salted butter in a baking recipe, you risk using too much salt! If you only have salted butter, just omit the salt in the recipe.

This is a just a helpful tip as we head into baking season!

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Renae Chiovaro

Renae is a married working mom of two handsome boys. She works as a registered dental hygienist by day and blogs here at How to Have it All by night. She enjoys cooking from scratch, working in her vegetable garden and functional training.