Why Is Butter Temperature So Important in Baking?

When most baking recipes call for butter, they often specify what temperature that butter should be. In pie, butter has to be refrigerator-cold. In cookies, butter is best at room temperature. In bread — it depends.

It is true that butter temperature is a complex thing, and even experienced bakers are cautious about it.

Butter in cookies

The first step in making cookie dough is to cream butter with sugar, and it is recommended that you keep butter at room temperature before beginning your cookie dough. Four hours is enough time.

“Room temp butter is able to hold onto air,” an expert says. “You can mechanically shove air into it by creaming. Warm butter is not able to hold onto it, so you’re going to get a denser dough.”

It is a struggle for cookies to lift and lighten when using warmer or melted butter, which leads to a cakier texture, like brownies. Experts warn against first softening butter in the microwave as the butter is unable to hold as much air.

Before baking cookies, many recipes recommend putting the cookie dough in the fridge for several hours or overnight. This is to make sure that your cookies stay plump when baking. “Warm butter will obviously melt faster in the oven and spread quicker.” The expert says.

If you’re making cookie dough with a high-fat content, it’s crucial to chill your dough before baking, or else the cookies may not be firm enough to maintain their structure when they bake.

Butter in pie dough

Pie dough recipes almost always require bakers to use refrigerator-cold or, sometimes, even freezer-cold, butter.

“I was always taught to use cold butter,” Lisa Ludwinski, owner of Sister Pie bakery and author of Sister Pie: The Recipes and Stories of a Big-Hearted Bakery in Detroit, says of how she makes her pie dough.

“When the butter stays cold, it … remains in there as its own private fat structure.” Once the pie dough enters the hot oven, the butter melts, creating steam, and delicious flaky layers. “I want the butter to stay intact, and I want it to stay separate from the other ingredients,” Ludwinski says.

Butter in breads

There are countless breads that don’t call for fat, but breads that do include a range of instructions and requirements on how to incorporate the butter into the dough.

Kristina Cho, author of Mooncakes & Milk Bread, says that her milk bread recipe utilizes room-temperature butter to attain that signature cotton candy texture in the crumb. She said about the use of butter, “I have two decisions I’m making: How is the butter being incorporated, and how do I want the butter to affect the final texture?”

Some brioche doughs call for cold butter chunks in the stand mixer while the dough is being mixed, but Cho would rather use room temperature butter for her milk bread since cold butter means you’ll need more time to knead your dough.

This can make bread tougher.

Cho says. “Bread tends to proof better at a warmer temperature. When you start to incorporate cold eggs, cold milk, and cold butter, it brings your dough temperature down. It can affect your overall proof environment.”