Yes, but start with the butter named in the recipe and look at the added salt before making a swap. A recipe written for salted butter already has a different starting point from one written for unsalted butter with salt added separately.
Keep the recipe developer’s substitution notes with the ingredient list. They’re more useful than assuming every recipe needs the same adjustment.
What adjustment does King Arthur recommend?
King Arthur Baking’s recipe guidance says that when a recipe calls for unsalted butter and you use salted, reduce the added salt by ¼ teaspoon for each 8 tablespoons, or 113 grams, of butter.
For a simple illustration, take a recipe calling for 113 grams of unsalted butter and ½ teaspoon of added salt. Applying that guidance would leave ¼ teaspoon of added salt when using salted butter. This is the arithmetic of the stated adjustment, not a comparison bake or a claim that every brand contributes an identical amount of salt.
If you’re using a recipe from another developer, check its own instructions first. If it offers no suitable adjustment, buying the specified butter gives you a clearer starting point than guessing how to rebalance the recipe.
Why might a recipe specify one kind?
King Arthur explains that unsalted butter lets its bakers control the total salt. It also identifies recipes deliberately written for salted butter, including shortbread, where salt can be difficult to distribute evenly through the thick, dry dough.
That is a useful reason to read the ingredient name as an instruction. “Salted” isn’t automatically an error, and “unsalted” isn’t a rule to impose on a recipe that was written differently.
Check the rest of the butter description
Salted versus unsalted is one distinction. European-style, whipped, and ordinary block butter introduce other questions. King Arthur’s butter guide discusses higher-fat European-style butter and explains that a cup of aerated whipped butter doesn’t weigh the same as a cup of regular butter.
Changing the salt calculation doesn’t turn those products into the same ingredient. Match the type of butter as well as its salt status, and keep any change in your baking notes.
Before mixing, check three things: the complete butter type, the amount and unit, and any adjustment to the separately added salt. Save the product name if you want to assess or repeat that version later.
Sources and photographs
King Arthur Baking references checked October 22, 2026. The substitution guidance is attributed to that developer, and the numerical example is illustrative. Licensed stock photographs show butter and a baking workspace; the pictured butter’s salt content and brand aren’t identified.
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