What happens if you sub regular butter for unsalted butter in a cobbler recipe?!
What happens if you sub regular butter for unsalted butter in a cobbler recipe?
Answers:
I never spend the money for unsalted butter unless it's Christmas time and I'll be doing a lot of baking. If your recipe calls for unsalted go ahead and use salted if that is what you have on hand. If the recipe calls for salt in any amount you can reduce by half or omit all together.
It'll be fine. If there's salt in the recipe, add slightly less than it calls for. If not, it's still okay to use the salted butter. I try to use unsalted for baking when I can, but will use the other if I have to.
Omit the salt from the recipe.
Nothing happens. The idea is that salted butter doesn't stay chilled long enough, and will stay a little warmer (I can't imagine the tinyness of that degree) but the colder your ingredients stay, the flakier the crust (supposedly)
Normally a recipe that calls for unsalted butter does so for a reason. In a dessert recipe, the reason is usually that the salt will take away from the sweetness of the dish. For instance, in a peach cobbler, the peaches tend to be sour when cooked (as does most fruit.) That is why you add sugar. Salt can make cooked fruits taste sour as well.
Salt is also a dehydrating element. It will pull moisture from the things around it. Therefor, a crust or crumbled topping that contains salt could actually end up being less crispy than a crust with limited salt, as it can pull the moisture from the fruit below it and retain it in the dough.
Now that I've said all that, most people (myself included) would probably not notice the difference if you used regular or unsalted butter. I just feel strongly that we all have too much salt in our lives, and we are missing out on the natural flavors of food because salt is over powering them.
Best to use salt as an ingredient and never a condiment.
It is a flavor enhancer, but I don't think it was ever meant to be a flavor unto itself.
I do this all the time when I bake, but I end up omitting the salt in the recipe to compensate for the salt in the butter. Now substituting unsalted butter for regular butter is awful. I didn't have any butter and borrowed some from my mom to make shortbread cookies. I didn't know the butter was unsalted and they were so gross I ended up throwing the whole batch out.