The Role of Butter in Baking

The Basics

Butter is a dairy product made from churning cream. It can be made from the milk of many animals, but is typically made from cow’s milk. Butter is comprised mainly of fat and water. It adds texture and flavor to baked goods.

Temperature Matters

Cold butter is used in recipes for things like biscuits, scones, and pie crusts. Typically, the butter will be cut into dry ingredients into pea-sized or larger clumps. These solid pieces of butter melt during baking and evaporate into the dough creating air pockets that result in a flaky texture.

Room Temperature butter is often used in baked goods like cookies that benefit from a soft, tender texture. The softness and temperature of the butter allow the butter to be emulsified with the rest of the ingredients. The butter coats the flour particles and helps inhibit gluten development which results in a tender finished product.

Melted butter is used when you want a more dense finished product. This is because the butter has already released some of its water content during the melting process so it will trap less air when baking. You will typically see melted butter used in recipes for baked good likes brownies that benefit from a dense, chewy texture.

Butter vs. Oil

Butter and oil are both fats and therefore serve a similar purpose in baking. However, there are some differences that you should keep in mind when choosing which to use in a recipe. Oil is 100% fat and does not have water content like butter does. This means that it does not provide leavening and aeration to a baked good like butter does (as described above) and thus is not typically used in recipes that need a flaky texture. However, oil is lighter than butter so it is often used in cakes and other baked goods that benefit from a light weight and texture. Oil also provides more moisture and is therefore often used in recipes to counteract dryness from other ingredients as is the case with chocolate cake.

Of course, there are also flavor and nutrition differences between oil and butter. I will not get into those here.

Lamination

Another use of butter in baking is lamination. This technique is seen in pastries like croissants that need a very airy and flaky. Laminated dough is made by rolling out a sheet of butter in between layers of dough and then folding and repeating many times. This creates many small alternating layers of dough and butter. When baked, the butter melts and water evaporates, leaving layers of air pockets where the butter was that create that super flaky texture and rich, buttery flavor.