According To Martha Stewart, The Best Unsalted Butter Comes From This State

You may have noticed that most baking recipes call for unsalted butter. Then again, you might be like me and think that whether the butter is salted or unsalted, it doesn't matter — you'll do what you want. Then you'd definitely be like me and you'd be very wrong. You see, just like having precise measurements, using unsalted butter is important when you're baking.

It turns out that all the different brands of salted butter add varying amounts of salt. If you're using one with a high amount of salt, then you're most likely going to change the flavor of your baking, and you'll see that quizzical look on people's faces when they try your chocolate chip cookies. And sure, sometimes people will tell you it's okay to use salted butter if you don't have a choice — you can just omit the salt from the recipe. While that's a good idea in a pinch (no pun intended), you should generally follow the recipe the way it's written.

And, when you're going to bake and you want perfect results, who better to listen to than Martha Stewart? Lucky for us non-experts, she just happens to have a favorite butter brand, and it comes from Vermont.

According to its website, Vermont Creamery's Unsalted Cultured Butter is "deliciously cultured, ridiculously creamy." The company boasts that its "expert buttermakers carefully add live bacterial cultures to fresh Vermont cream." They let the cream ferment overnight, and in the morning, the cultured cream has notes of buttermilk and hazelnuts to be used in the butter.

Martha Stewart used Vermont Creamery's Unsalted Cultured Butter in an Instagram video where she demonstrated making baked potatoes with caviar (as we do). While she wasn't baking in the demo, her love of the butter is well-known to the brand. The company talks about her endorsement on its website, noting Stewart's love of high-quality ingredients and stating: "If Martha says it's good, then it's good."

But you don't have to just take Stewart's word for it. The Vermont Creamery's Unsalted Cultured Butter also took the first runner-up prize in the unsalted butter category at the 35th Biannual World Championship Cheese Contest. Sounds like they deserve a little "pat" on the back.