How much salt is there in a tablespoon of salted butter? Don't
know? Neither do I. I bet it varies from brand to brand too.
Some time back, my wife and I discovered a french contraption called a
"beurriere". Basically, it allows you to keep butter at room temperature
for days or weeks at a time without having it go off. We stoppped using
margarine the next day. What we discovered, when going back to butter as a
spread, is that salted butter is *very* salty. Luckily, there is a brand
of semi-salted butter available in our area, so we switched to that.
I once tried to make croisants with salted butter (didn't have any unsalted
in the house at the time). They were inedible, it made that much of a
difference. This also illustrates another important point. The salt in
the croisant dough is a necessary component that adds to the elasticity of
the dough, I couldn't add less salt to the dough to compensate for the
butter, because the butter is added to the recipe after the dough has been
kneaded and risen.
There's two reasons: timing and precision.
Dave Barrett