Salted/Non salted butter

If it doesn't specify, use the one you prefer - most people would use the unsalted, since it might oversalt the recipe. Of course, it would depend what the recipe IS and if it calls for additional salty items or salt itself.

If your butter is unsalted and you need salted, simply add a very small amount of salt. Again, much depends on the other ingredients and the recipe itself. Many people use unsalted butter even if the recipe calls for salted.

Connie

Doesn't this come up every other week in this group?

Salted butter has a small amount of salt added as a preservative.

Unsalted butter does not. It is generally held by those who don't believe in substitutions that unsalted butter is higher quality.

I doubt that it's so much that unsalted butter is higher quality as it is that only the higher quality brands bother to make it.

I typically buy whatever butter is cheapest while not appearing that the packages have been left out at room temperature for extended periods of time. Yeah, you never know what the grocery store will do to your product. Anyway, recently, one of the $3/lb brands ("Challenge") was on sale for as cheap as the cheap stuff. So I bought a few pounds. Of salted. And was horrified to discover that it is a visibly higher quality product. Taken cold from the fridge the surface doesn't crumble when cut with a dull knife, spatula, whatever. It stays more cohesive and opaque when melted. It is a visibly better emulsifier. I could not have regretted this discovery more. I can't *afford the good stuff. Mind you, this was a better, more expensive brand of *salted butter, not an unsalted butter.

If you're not working on perfecting an art, go ahead and subtract a quarter teaspoon of salt from the recipe and use salted butter. If you were trying to perfect something, you probably wouldn't have asked.