I use my regular butter for baking, not unsalted. Does it really make a difference?

[BlackAmericanoNoSugar]

My thought process is that I bake on impulse and not very frequently so it's not worth having unsalted butter sitting around and potentially going off. I also can't be arsed to make a special trip to buy it because I would have gone off the idea of baking by the time I got home. Plus recipes almost always add salt, at least a pinch, sometimes half a teaspoon so it's not like the baked goods have to be salt-free. I'm not even sure if Kerrygold do an unsalted version, although I haven't really looked on the shelves.

Anyway, I don't think I can taste a difference, the only way to know for sure would be to make the same recipe with twice with the different butters. Nobody in my family has ever commented, they just eat it (except for the Guinness cake, nobody liked that very much).

I use salted butter and usually just don't add the salt the recipe asks for.

It is only so you control the amount of salt in the recipe. I rarely add salt if I am using salted butter but do on the rare occasion I am using unsalted.

This.

Yes, I don't bother with the salt when I'm using regular butter.

I'm the same. A bit of salt never does my cakes any harm.
On the rare occasions that I have bought unsalted it's ended up being used in a sandwich by dimwit dh or dc who then complain that their sandwich tastes wrong.

I've always used salted butter, as has my mother - I actually didn't know unsalted butter existed until I moved to the UK. I've never once tasted a cake or biscuit and thought "Ooh, too much salt. Must have used salted butter."

I remember Nigella once saying you should buy unsalted and add your own salt as they use cheap salt in salted butter, so it doesn’t taste as good as if you add your own good quality salt. As if 99.9% of people could even taste the difference 😂

My friend is a brilliant baker and hates unsalted butter - as poster above said, the salted stuff has just the right amount in so she doesn't need to add any to the recipes.

I'm decidedly not a brilliant baker and always find my cakes have a weird aftertaste that I can't put my finger on. The last few times I've baked I've used salted butter instead and the aftertaste hasn't been there so it must have been something to do with the unsalted stuff. No idea why!

I thought that there was something about salted and non-salted having difference amounts of water content. But, yeah, I use salted in baking and my cakes are OK (even if I do say so myself)..

You can always buy unsalted and then freeze it in portions, for the times when you do want it. As an aside, I save/keep butter-papers for various cooking purposes. I realised that they go rancid if they stay in the fridge too long so now I keep them in the freezer.

Kerrygold do an unsalted version, @BlackAmericanoNoSugar (in silver rather than gold wrapper), but I always bake with the salted version, too.

If your cakes/pastries/whatever have always turned out fine and not too salty for you then yes, of course it's fine.

I mix and match according to what I have/what I'm making, and will accommodate by subtracting salt where necessary.

I use the one with salt crystals for toast but I just use the regular salted butter for cooking.

We only have unsalted butter and that’s what I use in all my baking. We have both got used to food with no salt in.

I’ll add a pinch of salt if the recipe calls for it, in case salt is a catalyst for the baking process; but even when I used to make our own bread, I only ever put half the recommended amount of salt in. The texture may not have been quite as good, but we found the bread incredibly salty with the full amount in.

Sometimes, I’ll eat a cheese scone or quiche in an independent bakery/cafe and it’s so salty, I can barely eat it!

That's interesting @volingaround, I was asking because I was wondering if it was worth making the effort and I thought some people might say that the taste is much better with unsalted, but you have found that it actually tastes worse. Pretty much everyone else uses salted for baking except for @WeWillGetThereInTheEnd who is low-salt in general.

Anyway, I'm off to make some cocoa brownies, with salted butter even though the recipe specifies unsalted.

I use unsalted for everything, helps reduce total salt intake with no effort.

I use oil for emergency cakes to avoid having to have butter in

I always thought that if you added salt at the creaming stage it would "cook" the eggs, and also you wouldn't use salted butter for things like buttercream?

If thats wrong, I'm wondering why the hell I've been slavishly buying unsalted all this time as salted is clearly superior taste!

I've only ever used salted butter for buttercream, without it tasting 'salty'.

The first time I made cupcakes with unsalted butter (Lurpak) I realised I should never use normal butter ever again. They were the best tasting cupcakes I had ever baked in my life. And I'm a good baker (just shit at decorating lol).

I do keep unsalted butter in the fridge now, even if it goes off so I have to buy more - if I'm in the mood to bake, I want the ingredients there and I'd hate to go back!

I think if a recipe calls for salt to be added, use normal butter but don't add salt if you don't want to switch.

This!
Baked goods need a bit of salt.

I was doing some fancy cooking the other day and I bought in some unsalted butter just for that. Turned out I hadn't made enough, so had to used salted for the rest - and couldn't tell the difference when they were out. I always use salted for everything else, so have decided never to bother buying unsalted again.