{"id":42129,"date":"2023-09-29T08:05:00","date_gmt":"2023-09-29T08:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2023\/09\/29\/the-best-butter-for-baking-comes-from-a-surprising-place\/"},"modified":"2023-09-29T08:05:00","modified_gmt":"2023-09-29T08:05:00","slug":"the-best-butter-for-baking-comes-from-a-surprising-place","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2023\/09\/29\/the-best-butter-for-baking-comes-from-a-surprising-place\/","title":{"rendered":"The Best Butter for Baking Comes From a Surprising Place"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Our test kitchen goes through pounds and pounds (and pounds) of butter every week. Maybe it\u2019s for saut\u00e9eing kale, mashing potatoes<\/a>, or scrambling eggs<\/a>. But, most often, it\u2019s for baking.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t need to tell you that unsalted butter is the default for baked goods, from chocolate chip cookies<\/a> to pound cakes<\/a> to pie crusts<\/a>. Using unsalted butter allows you to control the amount of salt in your baked goods (especially since the salt content in salted butter varies, so it\u2019s hard to know exactly how much you\u2019re adding). The more nitty-gritty\u2014and less talked about\u2014distinction is American-style versus European-style.<\/p>\n

In On Food and Cooking<\/em><\/a>, Harold McGee defines the latter as \u201ca cultured butter with a fat content higher than the standard 80 percent.\u201d Depending on the brand, expect European butter to contain anywhere from 82 to 86 percent. In the United States, American-made butter must contain at least 80 percent fat. It may not sound like a huge difference, but just think of whole versus nonfat milk\u2014a few percentage points makes a world of difference when it comes to flavor. Irish and European-style butter are beloved for being richer and creamier because they contain more milk and have a lower water content; this also means that they\u2019re easier to bring to room temperature, which is ideal when you\u2019re in a pinch and need softened butter stat.<\/p>\n

Of course, baking a muffin is not drinking a glass of milk. Fat is flavor, yes, but it\u2019s also one of the components in a fine-tuned formula. Safe to say that there are dozens of butter brands to pick from at the grocery store, but which one is the best for your recipe? It\u2019s easy to think that swapping in higher-fat, European-style butter in any baking recipe would lead to more flavorful pie crusts, brown butter blondies, chocolate chip cookies, you name it. (And, as European-style butters have become more popular in the U.S., a lot of online resources have indicated as much.) But that sort of swap can unravel a recipe.<\/p>\n

As award-winning baker Stella Parks noted a few years ago:<\/p>\n


\nFriendly reminder: switching to European style butter in an American recipe isn\u2019t an upgrade, it\u2019s a fundamental alteration of the formula.<\/strong>
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Similarly, King Arthur<\/a> conducted a few American-style versus European-style baking experiments\u2014and found that recipes with American-style butter did not<\/em> appreciate a European-style substitute. Shortbread turned out greasier. And scones: flatter, \u201csad, and slumped.\u201d<\/p>\n

All of which is o say, if you\u2019re baking a recipe developed for American-style butter, American-style butter is your best bet. Not all recipes will specify which type of butter to use, but if you\u2019re cooking a baking recipe from a U.S.-based recipe developer, it\u2019s safe to assume that they used American-style and not European-style butter.<\/p>\n

But which American-style butter is the best to buy for baking? We did a taste test of five popular brands of butter to find out which is the best.<\/strong><\/p>\n