Let me tell you:
- salted butter is cheaper
- salted butter lasts longer because salt is a preservative
- salt is incredibly important in baking. I generally don't trust a dessert recipe if it doesn't have salt in it. I also don't adjust the salt amount from the actual recipe, the salt in the salted butter is extra
- simply put, the salt in salted butter is so minute in quantity it doesn't matter at all
- "but I'm making a dessert"--yeah! salt accentuates the sweetness. salt allows you to use less sugar because your tongue is sensitive to contrast, I add cayenne pepper/matcha powder to my brownies and cakes and nobody can tell but they know something is better, the chocolate is 'nicer' and has more 'layers', this is how you know there are no rules in life so go out there and be sexy
On the topic of salt, all you wonderful people should know:
- in NZ, it's incredibly common for women to have both iodine and iron deficiencies. in fact, most doctors I know always run a blood test first to check iron and iodine levels. this is mostly due to our soil and water
- lack of iodine manifests in many symptoms: feeling cold, weight gain, and severe tiredness. (you'll note these are extremely common symptoms for a variety of things, and that's why it's important to rule out that you don't have an iodine deficiency first. it's easy to fix!)
- iodized salt is about 1 NZD (that's 60 US cents) extra. it will last you months.
- as such, if you can buy iodized salt, you might as well
(you can also get iodine from seaweed. I always recommend miso seaweed soup because it's incredibly cheap and fast to make and will last you months. whereas telling people to eat more seafood, meats, organs they don't know how to cook, and eggs is far too expensive. a single egg costs more than a dollar here) - processed food companies have been removing iodizied salt because it saves them a few cents on the dollar. over the years, I've noticed lots of packaging discrepancies in their ingredients section.
- if you're always eating out, it's incredibly unlikely that restaurants and takeaway places are giving you iodized salt. also, fancy salt isn't iodized. my chef friend who uses fancy shit exclusively actually made his wife deficient because of this. he was fine since men are less likely to be iodine deficient in NZ. his wife was not.
