Yum! November 2005

Nov. 21 foodie diary: Butter basics
Butter must have an identity crisis. Judging by the number of questions we get, it is the most misunderstood ingredient in baking. So, if you are wondering about labels or substitutions, here are a few quick answers to commonly asked questions.

What's the deal with salted and unsalted butter?
Salt is added to butter for flavour and a longer shelf life. Salted butter can contain as much as 3% salt, but it varies among manufactures. Many chefs prefer unsalted butter because they can then control the amount of salt in a recipe. Most recipes will list either salted or unsalted butter in the ingredients. However, in Canadian Living recipes butter means salted unless otherwise stated.

If you prefer to bake with unsalted butter, the rule of thumb is to add about 1/4 tsp (1 mL) salt per 1/2 cup (125 mL) butter. In sauces, season to taste. Whichever you choose, it is important to buy good-quality butter for optimum baking results (in our Test Kitchen, we use Lactantia and Gay Lea). You may spend a little more at the grocery store, but the results are worth it.

What can I substitute for butter?
• Olive oil is a good substitute for butter when sautéing or tossing with cooked pasta, rice or vegetables. Vegetable oil is often used in vegan baking, but yields flatter, denser and slightly oilier results (especially in cookies and pastry). Oil is a good substitute for butter when making very moist bake goods (such as muffins or carrot cake) or hard, crunchy cookies (such as mandelbrodt). However, pie pastry made with oil can be difficult to work with and crumbly to serve.

• Margarine has inferior flavour to butter, but otherwise is a good substitute. For dark, homey treats such as chocolate brownies, you will probably not notice a difference between the two. However, for delicately flavoured pastry shop items (sponge cakes, shortbread and buttercream) butter is best. Texturally, butter makes cookies crispy, while margarine makes them soft (and sometimes difficult to shape). We just tested a granola bar recipe using margarine and loved the chewy, less crumbly results.

• Shortening also has inferior flavour to butter, but because it is made from vegetable oil it is suitable for restricted diets (such as halal, kosher, lactose intolerant and vegan). However, it contains trans fats. Likewise, lard (made from pig fat) has inferior flavour, but makes pastry flakier (and cookies crunchier) than butter. In our Test Kitchen, we like to mix butter with lard to strike a balance between taste and flakiness in our pastries. Plus, this combination is very easy to work with. Last summer, we developed an all butter pastry to circumvent trans fats (we used it in our step-by-step Strawberry Rhubarb Pie recipe). The results were lovely (really puffy and rich), but unlike our lard and butter Perfect Pastry, we needed to roll out the top and bottom crusts of the all butter pastry before chilling (all butter becomes quite hard in the refrigerator, making it difficult to work with.)

Hope this helps with your holiday baking.

If you have a cooking question ask our Test Kitchen experts in the Just ask section of CanadianLiving.com.