If one ingredient is the heart and soul of baking, it’s probably butter.
Our dear butter. Rich, flavorful, fatty butter that turns everything it touches to gold. Well, not literally, but you know what I mean. Let’s just say that there is a good reason why butter boards were the most successful food trend of 2022.
Butter is one of the most important baking ingredients, and rightfully so. What’s a baked good without butter? Boring, flavorless, dry, and dense. With the addition of butter, baked goods become more rich, flavorful, creamy, tender, and moist (the benefits are unlimited).
The moistness of a cake, the flakiness of a pie, and the smoothness of a caramel sauce all come from butter. Safe to say, using butter the right way is a very important factor in creating a good dessert. But to use it correctly, you first have to understand the ins and outs of butter so that you can use butter to make your baking recipes better than ever before.
Today, we’ll be taking an in-depth look into the science of butter in baking – how it works and how it reacts with different ingredients to help you better understand the processes and give you the ability to develop your own recipes.
Welcome to Ep 2 of Baking Basics, a series where we will dive deep into the science of baking’s 4 key ingredients – eggs, sugar, butter, and raising agents- to help you develop your recipes and troubleshoot baking errors, and become a better baker.
Check out Episode 1: Baking Basics – Eggs In Baking here.
So, what is butter made of?
Butter is primarily made of cow’s milk, more specifically from the fat content of cow’s milk. This is why, to no one’s surprise, butter consists almost entirely of fat (about 80%), while the remaining 20% is made of water or moisture.
The main function of butter is to act as fat, which is why any butter is required to have a minimum of 80% of fat content to qualify as butter legally.
Butter is made by separating the solid fats from the liquids (buttermilk) in cream made out of cow’s milk using a process called churning. Butter can also be easily made at home by overwhipping cream until the fats and liquids separate, straining the fats, and squeezing out the liquids from them.
The high-fat content of butter is what makes it the star of the show in baking recipes. It gives cakes their moistness, pastries their flakiness, custards and sauces their smoothness, and other recipes richness and flavor.
Both elements of butter (butterfat and liquid content) play a role in baking. The fat element provides moistness to recipes which helps them become more tender, while the liquid content provides moisture that helps in hydrating proteins found in other ingredients and helps bind ingredients properly.
Let’s look into the role of butter in baking more deeply.
Butter in Baking
As we discussed earlier, butter is the main fat source in baking recipes. The high-fat content plays various roles in baking.
In many recipes, butter is creamed with sugar as a base, which allows the sugar granules to incorporate properly within the butter, creating air pockets, which results in the final baked good being light and fluffy.
In common recipes for cakes, cookies, brownies, and more, the fat in butter coats the starches and proteins in other ingredients like eggs and sugar, which results in a homogenous batter and a soft texture.
The fat in butter also discourages the formation of gluten strands and slows down the process of gluten formation, creating a softer texture in bread and other baked goods.
Butter’s liquid content also helps hydrate the proteins in other ingredients, binds them together properly, and adds more moisture to pastries. Wonder why croissants, puff pastries, choux buns, and other pastries expand and rise while baking? It’s because the liquid content of butter evaporates and creates steam, which helps the pastry rise while baking.
Why You Should Use High-Quality Butter in Baking
Not all butter is made equal. Some are better than others. But what’s really the difference between a high-quality butter and an average-quality one, and does it really matter?
The quality of butter is determined by its fat content. As I mentioned earlier, every butter must have a minimum of 80% fat content. High-quality butter, however, has a higher fat content, ranging around 82-85%. These are usually European butter like Kerrygold and Lurpak, which is why these brands are more popular for baking. American butter tends to have a lower fat percentage, ranging around 80-82%.
As the fat in butter contributes to the softness and tenderness of baked goods, a higher quality better with a better fat percentage will result in softer cakes, cookies, brownies, etc., compared to a lower fat percentage butter.
Lower fat content also means a higher liquid content in the butter. While this increase in liquid may not significantly affect simpler recipes like muffins and cookies, it can make pastries and doughs tougher and not as flaky. When working with technical recipes like puff pastry, croissants, and pie crusts, we recommend splurging on the GOOD butter; you will see a noticeable difference.
Unsalted vs Salted Butter In Baking
One of the most common confusion and question people have about butter is the difference between salted and unsalted butter and if they can be substituted for each other.
Baking recipes almost exclusively use unsalted butter, and people always ask – can we use salted butter instead? Does the type of butter matter to your final recipe?
Technically, there is no difference between salted and unsalted butter except for the salt. However, it’s always better to use unsalted butter in recipes, especially when it’s a dessert. Here’s why.
The amount of salt in salted butter differs from brand to brand. So when you add salted butter to a recipe, you don’t know how much salt you add. When using unsalted butter, you can control the amount of salt you are adding to your food. Given that the right amount of salt is key to a delicious dish (sweet or savory), this one point makes a lot of difference.
Interested in learning more? Check this out →
How to substitute salted butter for unsalted butter
Temperature of Butter in Baking
Every baking recipe uses either cold, soft or melted butter. The temperature of butter in a recipe makes a significant difference to the end result. Let’s take an in-depth look at how butter temperature works in baking.
Softened Butter
Room temperature or softened butter is the most commonly used one in baking. Softened butter should not be too soft or too cold; it should be able to hold its shape while still being soft at the touch.
The texture of softened butter allows it to coat other ingredients properly and creates a smoother, more homogenous mixture, which results in even distribution of fat across the batter.
Softened butter becomes creamy and fluffy when whisked at high speed, especially with sugar. This happens due to the formation of air pockets within the butter. These air pockets help baked goods like cakes and pastries rise in the oven while baking.
Melted Butter
Melted butter is primarily used in baking for the purpose of adding more flavor to the recipe. As the butter is in liquid form, it does not have the capability to create air pockets in the batter, which means it cannot aid the recipe in leavening.
A great example to understand the difference between melted and soft butter would be cookies. Using soft, room-temperature butter that is creamed with sugar in a cookie dough will result in thick, chunky cookies as the creaming process creates air pockets and helps the cookie rise in the oven. However, as melted butter cannot create those air pockets, a cookie made with melted butter will be thin and crispy.
Cold Butter
Some recipes, like pie crust or puff pastry, use cold, hard butter. Cold butter is used when you don’t want the butter to combine with the remaining ingredients properly. Instead, you want it to remain intact and unincorporated. Having chunks of butter in the dough helps pastries rise in the oven due to the steam created as the butter’s liquid content evaporates while baking. This process helps create the flaky layers we all love in a good pastry.
Recommended Butter Brands For Baking
As discussed earlier, high-quality butter has a higher fat percentage than regular butter. While this difference may not significantly affect most recipes, it impacts technical desserts like pastries, croissants, and pie crusts. This is why we recommend going for a higher fat percentage of butter when making such desserts.
Here are a few high-quality butter brands recommended for baking
- Kerrygold Pure Irish Butter (82% fat)
- Lurpak Butter (82% fat)
- Elle & Vire Butter (82% fat)
Butter in Baking – Summary
After all that reading, here are the most important things to keep in mind about the science of butter in baking.
- Butter is made of two components – butter fat and liquid content.
- Butter should have a minimum of 80% fat content.
- High-quality butter has a higher fat content, between 82-85%.
- The fat in butter provides moistness to recipes which helps them become more tender.
- The liquid content in butter provides moisture that helps in hydrating proteins found in other ingredients.
- Baking recipes always use unsalted butter instead of salt to control the amount of salt that’s added to the recipe.
- The temperature of butter in a recipe matters. Soft butter aids the formation of air pockets in a better and helps in the leavening process, melted butter is primarily used for flavoring, and cold butter is used in pastries like croissants and pie crust to create steam as the liquid in the butter evaporates while baking to help the pastry layers rise in the oven.
- Butter is absolutely delicious.
If you are interested in learning more about the different types of butter, this article on butter by Masterclass is a great read.
And there you go, you are now fully educated about the science of butter in baking. With this information, you can figure out how to use eggs when developing your own recipes or troubleshoot when things go wrong.
I hope you find this helpful! Stay tuned for the ep 3 coming next week – Sugar!
Until next time!
