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The Best Butter for Baking: A Side-by-Side Taste Test (You’ll Be Surprised)
I’m going to say something that might ruffle a few feathers in the baking world. Not all butter is created equal. And I found that out the hard way, standing in my kitchen, staring at two batches of the same shortbread recipe that looked (and tasted) completely different.
The only thing I changed? The butter. And the best butter for baking turned out to be nothing like the one I’d been grabbing off the shelf for years.
That moment sent me down a rabbit hole. I bought six different butters. I baked three different recipes with every single one. Shortbread cookies. Pie crust. Buttercream frosting. I ran a blind taste test, took obsessive notes, and honestly? The results genuinely changed how I bake.
If you’ve ever stood in the dairy aisle wondering whether that pricier butter is actually worth it, this post is for you.
Why the Best Butter for Baking Isn’t “Just Butter”
Here’s the thing most people don’t realize. Butter is roughly 80% fat, with the rest being water and milk solids. But that ratio isn’t the same across every brand. According to the USDA butter grading standards, American butter must contain at least 80% milkfat to legally be called butter. European butter, by contrast, must hit a minimum of 82% under EU regulations, and many producers push to 84%, 85%, even 86%.
I know. A 2 to 6% gap sounds tiny. But as food scientist Harold McGee explains in his landmark book On Food and Cooking, those percentage points shift the entire balance of fat, water, and protein in your batter. Less water means less gluten development. Less steam means less spreading. More fat means richer flavor and more tender crumb. The science is real, and you can absolutely taste it.
And if you want to see just how dramatically butterfat content affects flavor, try browning two different butters side by side. Higher-fat European butter produces a noticeably deeper, nuttier brown butter than standard American butter. My complete guide to making brown butter walks you through exactly how and why.
After spending months building out The Butter Edit here on the blog, researching compound butters, homemade butter, and everything in between, I kept coming back to one question nobody was answering with real data:
Which specific butters perform best when you actually bake with them?
So I tested it myself.
How I Tested: The Full Methodology
Most butter taste tests online use a single recipe. I wanted to go further. Each of the six butters was tested in three completely different applications, because butter performs differently depending on what you’re making.
Test 1: Shortbread cookies. A three ingredient recipe (butter, flour, sugar) where there is absolutely nowhere for mediocre butter to hide. This test reveals pure butter flavor and texture.
Test 2: Pie crust. Butter is cut cold into flour here, so this test shows how each butter handles at low temperatures and how it creates (or doesn’t create) those beautiful flaky layers.
Test 3: Buttercream frosting. Whipped butter and powdered sugar. This test shows creaminess, stability, and how the butter flavor reads when it’s front and center in a frosting.
Every butter was unsalted and brought to the same temperature before use. I used the same brands of flour and sugar throughout. And the final taste test was blind, meaning my family rated each one without knowing which butter they were eating.
Here’s the lineup:
| Butter | Style | Marketed Butterfat | Label Reads (per 14g) | Price (approx.) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Whole Foods 365 | American, sweet cream | 80% | 11g fat | ~$3.50/lb |
| Land O'Lakes Unsalted | American, sweet cream | 80% | 11g fat | ~$5.00/lb |
| Challenge Unsalted | American, sweet cream | 80% | 11g fat | ~$4.75/lb |
| Plugrá European Style | American made, European style | 82% | 11g fat | ~$6.50/lb |
| Organic Valley Classic | Pasture raised, sweet cream | 80%+ | 11g fat | ~$8.00/lb |
| Kerrygold Unsalted | Irish, grass fed, sweet cream | 82% | 12g fat | ~$7.50/lb |
The Recipe I Used for Every Batch
Here’s the exact recipe I used for every batch. Three ingredients, nothing to hide behind.
Three Ingredient Shortbread (Butter Taste Test Recipe)
- Total Time: 30 minutes
- Yield: 4 thick cookies 1x
Description
A dead simple shortbread that lets butter do all the talking. Three ingredients, no distractions. Press the dough thick so the crumb shows beautifully when you break one open.
Ingredients
- 1 cup unsalted butter, cold and cut into cubes
- 1/2 cup powdered sugar (confectioners sugar)
- 2 cups of all purpose flour
- 1/4 tsp fine sea salt (optional but recommended)
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 325°F. Line a small baking sheet or 8×8 pan with parchment paper.
- In a medium bowl, beat the butter with a hand mixer or stand mixer on medium speed until smooth and creamy, about 1 minute. Add the powdered sugar and beat until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. The mixture should look pale and smooth with no sugar lumps. Do not overbeat. You want it creamy, not whipped.
- Add the flour and salt. Mix on low speed just until the dough comes together. It will look crumbly at first, then form a soft dough. Stop as soon as it holds together. Overworking develops gluten, which makes tough shortbread.
- Press the dough into the lined pan or shape by hand into 4 thick rounds (about 3 inches wide and ¾ inch thick). Press thick. This is important. Thicker cookies show the crumb beautifully when you break them and hold up better for stacking. If using a pan, score the dough into 4 equal pieces with a knife before baking so they break cleanly after.
- Bake at 325°F for 22 to 28 minutes. The edges should be just barely golden. The center will still look slightly pale. Shortbread continues to firm up as it cools, so pull it out before you think it’s done.
- Let the shortbread cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. Do not break or move them while warm. Once cool, they should be firm, sandy, and snap cleanly when broken.
Notes
For the taste test: I made this recipe 6 times, once per butter. Same flour, same sugar, same oven temp, same bake time, same pan. The only variable was the butter.
- Prep Time: 5 minutes
- Cook Time: 25 minutes
- Category: Dessert
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: American
The Results: Ranked from Last Place to First
6th Place: Store Brand Generic
The shortbread came out pale, bland, and almost waxy on the tongue. Very little butter flavor at all. The pie crust was tough rather than flaky, which is a sign of higher water content producing more gluten. And the buttercream? Gritty and flat. My husband actually said, “This tastes like nothing.” Harsh, but fair.
Best for: Greasing pans. That’s about it.
5th Place: Land O’Lakes Unsalted
This one surprised me. Land O’Lakes is a kitchen staple, and it’s the butter the Southern Living test kitchen has endorsed for years. The cookies were perfectly fine. Good structure, nice golden color. But the butter flavor was mild. Almost too mild. The pie crust was decent and predictable. The buttercream was stable but a little flat.
Here’s an interesting thing about Land O’Lakes though. Its packaging actually protects butter from absorbing fridge odors better than most brands, which is something Cook’s Illustrated flagged in their testing. That helps it taste clean. But “clean” and “flavorful” aren’t the same thing.
Best for: Everyday baking where butter plays a supporting role. Think chocolate chip cookies, banana bread, muffins.
4th Place: Challenge Unsalted
Challenge performed similarly to Land O’Lakes but had a slightly cleaner dairy flavor that I appreciated. The cookies had a nice snap on the edges and a tender center. The pie crust was reliable. The buttercream was smooth.
Best for: Large batch baking when you need quantity and consistency without breaking the bank.
![Close up of [brand] shortbread cookie broken in half showing crumb texture in the best butter for baking taste test.](https://justjeanniejacobs.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/best-butter-for-baking-crumb-plugra-16x9-1-scaled.webp)
3rd Place: Plugrá European Style Unsalted
Now this is where I felt the leap. The jump from the standard butters to Plugrá’s 82% was noticeable across all three tests. The shortbread was richer and more golden. The pie crust had better flake. The buttercream was silkier and tasted more like actual butter.
Plugrá is worth knowing about. The name comes from the French plus gras (“more fat”), and it’s actually American made despite the French branding. Professional bakers love it because the 82% butterfat is extremely consistent batch to batch. That kind of consistency matters when you’re baking at scale, which is why pastry programs at culinary schools often stock Plugrá.
Best for: Best for: A reliable step up for serious home bakers. Excellent for pie crusts and laminated doughs (think croissants and puff pastry, where layers of butter and dough get folded together for flake). And one application where Plugrá actually beats Kerrygold? See The Bottom Line section below for the pound cake exception.
2nd Place: Organic Valley European Style Cultured
Oh, I loved this one. The cultured tang added a subtle complexity to the shortbread that made it feel almost gourmet. Despite the nutrition label showing the same 11g as the standard butters, the cookies were noticeably more tender and practically dissolved on my tongue. This is where I started to realize that the label alone doesn’t tell the full story. The pie crust? Easily the best flake of the entire test. Airy, layered, deeply buttery. The buttercream was velvety and complex in a way that made me want to frost a cake immediately.
The culturing process is what makes this butter special. Live bacterial cultures are added to the cream before churning, fermenting it for hours. That fermentation creates the same kind of tangy depth you get in good yogurt or sourdough. In baking, it doesn’t read as tanginess exactly. It reads as richness and complexity. Even people who can’t identify the tang will tell you the baked good tastes “more interesting.”
Best for: Special occasion baking. This is the butter I reach for when I want simple recipes to feel extraordinary.
1st Place: Kerrygold Unsalted
And the color was stunning. That deep golden yellow comes from beta carotene in the milk of grass fed cows. Kerrygold’s cows graze on Irish pasture for up to 312 days a year. It’s not a dye. It’s diet. And you can taste the difference in every single bite.
Here’s something interesting I noticed when checking labels. Kerrygold was the only butter in my test that showed 12g of fat per tablespoon on the nutrition label, while every other butter (including Plugrá and Organic Valley, both marketed as European style or premium) showed 11g. When you do the math (12 divided by the 14g serving), that puts Kerrygold closer to 85 or 86% butterfat, not the 82% you’ll see cited in most articles. I can’t say for certain whether that’s the exact number, but the label tells a clear story: this butter has more fat per serving than anything else I tested. And you can taste it.
Every blind taste tester picked this one as their favorite across all three bakes. Not even close.
Best for: Any recipe where butter is the star. Shortbread, pound cake, pie crust, buttercream, brown butter sauces. This is also the butter I use for my butter boards.
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The Science: What’s Actually Happening Inside Your Oven
Understanding the science behind these results makes you a more confident baker. Here’s what’s happening at a molecular level.
Butterfat Controls Flavor AND Structure
Fat is where butter flavor lives. When you increase the butterfat percentage from 80% to somewhere between 82 and 86%, you’re concentrating that flavor while simultaneously reducing water. Less water means less gluten development when the butter meets flour, which is exactly why higher fat butters produce more tender cookies and flakier pie crust.
As the baking experts at King Arthur Baking explain, they tested European style butter against standard Grade AA butter in scones and found that the higher fat butter produced a cakier, denser crumb while the standard butter produced the classic craggy, layered texture most American recipes are designed for. This is an important nuance. More fat isn’t always “better.” It’s about matching your butter to your recipe’s design.
More Fat, Less Water, More Flavor
This is the single most important thing to understand about butter in baking, and once you get it, everything else clicks.
Butter is fat, water, and a tiny bit of milk solids. That’s it. When the fat goes up, the water goes down. There’s nowhere else for the math to go.
A standard butter (11g fat on the label) is roughly 79% fat and 19% water. A premium butter like Kerrygold (12g fat on the label) is roughly 86% fat and just 12% water. That’s 7% less water working against you and 7% more fat working for you. Same recipe, completely different result.
Here’s what that means in your oven:
Cookies stay put. Water turns to steam, and steam makes cookies spread flat. Less water means less steam means your shortbread holds its shape and develops that beautiful sandy, melt away texture instead of pancaking on the baking sheet.
Pie crust stays flaky, not soggy. Excess water in butter is what makes pie crust tough and heavy. When the water evaporates unevenly, it creates pockets that collapse instead of clean, flaky layers. A higher fat butter keeps those layers intact because there’s simply less moisture disrupting them.
The right butter is the difference between a flaky biscuit and a dense one, which is exactly why I built my chicken pot pie with biscuit crust on a cold, high butterfat European style butter.
Cakes stay fluffy and flavorful. Less water means less gluten development when the butter meets the flour, and less gluten means a softer, more tender crumb. The extra fat also carries flavor more effectively. Fat is literally where butter flavor lives. More of it means every bite tastes richer, more buttery, more like the cake you imagined when you started baking it.
And the flavor difference is real. Water doesn’t taste like anything. It dilutes. When 19% of your butter is water, almost a fifth of what you’re putting into your recipe adds zero flavor. Drop that to 12% and suddenly the butter is doing more of what you actually want it to do.
More fat. Less water. More flavor. That’s the whole story.
Cultured vs. Sweet Cream Changes Depth
Most American butter is “sweet cream,” meaning it’s churned from fresh pasteurized cream. Cultured butter has live bacterial cultures added before churning, fermenting the cream for 12 to 24 hours. This creates lactic acid, which adds a subtle tang and more complex aroma. In baking, cultured butter adds a perceived richness and depth. Even people who can’t identify the tang specifically will say the baked good tastes “more interesting.”
A Caveat Worth Hearing
Award winning pastry chef Stella Parks has pointed out that swapping European style butter into a recipe developed for American butter isn’t an “upgrade.” It’s a fundamental alteration of the formula. The ratios of fat, water, and protein all shift, and the recipe may not perform the way you expect. This is worth remembering before you swap in premium butter for Grandma’s famous cookie recipe on Christmas Eve. Try it on a low stakes Tuesday first.
Made something incredible with one of these butters? I want to see it! Tag me @jeanniejacobs on Instagram and share your baking wins. I love celebrating what you’re creating in your kitchens.
The Comparison Table: All Six Butters at a Glance
| Butter | Label Fat | Shortbread | Pie Crust | Buttercream | Overall Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kerrygold Unsalted | 12g | ★★★★★ | ★★★★★ | ★★★★★ | #1 |
| Organic Valley Euro Cultured | 11g | ★★★★½ | ★★★★★ | ★★★★½ | #2 |
| Plugrá European Style | 11g | ★★★★ | ★★★★ | ★★★★ | #3 |
| Challenge Unsalted | 11g | ★★★ | ★★★½ | ★★★ | #4 |
| Land O’Lakes Unsalted | 11g | ★★★ | ★★★ | ★★★ | #5 |
| Store Brand Generic | 11g | ★★ | ★★ | ★★ | #6 |
When to Splurge vs. When to Save
You do NOT need premium butter for everything. Here’s my honest framework after doing this whole test.
Splurge on higher fat butter (82%+) for: – Shortbread, butter cookies, and sugar cookies – Pie crust and pastry dough – Pound cake and butter cake – Buttercream frosting (especially Swiss or French meringue) – Croissants and laminated doughs – Brown butter sauces – Butter boards and anything served with butter front and center
Save with standard American butter for: – Chocolate chip cookies, oatmeal cookies, and recipes with bold flavors – Banana bread, zucchini bread, and quick breads – Brownies and blondies – Muffins – Greasing pans – Any recipe where butter is one ingredient among many
Butter Tips I Swear By After Years of Testing
Always use unsalted. The amount of salt in salted butter varies wildly between brands. Some contain nearly double the sodium of others. Using unsalted gives you total control over the flavor of your finished bake.
Temperature matters more than you think. Room temp butter (around 65 to 68°F) for creaming. Cold butter straight from the fridge for flaky pastry. Frozen butter grated on a box grater for scones. Know what your recipe needs and don’t wing it.
Weigh your butter. A kitchen scale is the single best $15 investment you can make for your baking. Measuring cups can be off by 10 to 15%. When you’re using premium butter, every gram counts.
Store it like it matters. Butter absorbs fridge odors fast, so keep it wrapped tightly in its original packaging, then tuck it inside a zip top bag. It freezes beautifully for up to six months, which means you can stock up whenever your favorite goes on sale.
Learn to Read the Nutrition Label (But Know Its Limits)
Most butter brands don’t print the butterfat percentage anywhere on the package. The nutrition label can help, but here’s what I learned when I actually checked all six of my test butters: it’s not as clean as you’d hope.
The formula is simple:
Total fat grams ÷ serving size in grams = butterfat percentage
The standard serving size for butter is 14g (one tablespoon). So here’s how it works with the real numbers from my test:
• Kerrygold: 12g ÷ 14g = 0.857 = about 86% butterfat
• Land O’Lakes: 11g ÷ 14g = 0.786 = about 79% butterfat
That’s the math. Grab any butter from your fridge right now, flip it over, find the total fat line, and divide by 14. You’ll have your answer in two seconds.
The problem is that labels round to the nearest whole gram. There’s no “11.5g” on a real nutrition label. It either says 11 or 12. Which means:
• 11g on the label = standard tier. This includes butters ranging from roughly 75% to 82% butterfat. In my test, Plugrá (marketed as 82%) and Organic Valley both showed 11g, right alongside the 80% standard butters. The label made them look identical even though they tasted noticeably different.
• 12g on the label = premium tier. This indicates roughly 82% or higher. In my test, only Kerrygold showed 12g, which puts it closer to 85 or 86% based on the math.
Bottom line: The label can tell you whether a butter is in the standard tier (11g) or the premium tier (12g), but it can’t tell you the exact butterfat percentage. Don’t rely on the label alone. Taste the butter recipe . Bake with it. Your cookies will tell you the truth faster than any nutrition panel.
Shop My Kitchen Edit
These are the exact tools I reached for during the taste test. Nothing fancy, nothing you need to special order.
Kitchen scale — for weighing butter precisely across all 6 batches. I use a simple digital scale and it’s the single best baking investment I’ve ever made.
Instant read thermometer — for checking butter temperature before creaming. Room temp butter (67°F) makes all the difference between a tender crumb and a dense one.
8×8 baking pan — same pan for every batch so the thickness stays consistent.
Parchment paper — line the pan for easy removal and cleanup.
Hand mixer — for creaming butter and sugar. A stand mixer works too, but I find a hand mixer gives you more control with small batches like these.
For more of my favorite kitchen tools, visit The Kitchen Edit.
More Recipes, More Moments
Welcome to My Table is my cookbook filled with recipes rooted in connection, flavor, and elevated everyday moments. From weeknight dinners to gatherings worth remembering.
What About USDA Butter Grades?
This is a question I see constantly in baking forums and on Reddit, and it’s worth addressing. The USDA grades butter as Grade AA, Grade A, and Grade B. Grade AA is the highest quality, scoring highest for flavor, body, texture, and color. Most butter in your grocery store is Grade AA.
But here’s what a lot of people miss. USDA grade tells you about quality within a category, not about butterfat percentage. A Grade AA American butter at 80% butterfat and a Grade AA European style butter at 84% butterfat are both top quality. But they’ll perform very differently in your oven.
When you’re shopping, look at both the grade (shoot for AA) and the fat content. That combination is what separates good baking butter from great baking butter.
Ready to go deeper into intentional living? My Elevated Living class takes what we explore here and goes further. It’s a guided experience for women ready to bring more beauty, purpose, and joy into every corner of their lives. Come join us.
The Bottom Line: My Honest, Final Take on the Best Butter for Baking
After testing six butters across three recipes in a blind taste test, here’s what I know for sure. Kerrygold Unsalted is the best butter for baking when butter is the star of the recipe. The flavor is unmatched at its price point. The grass-fed golden color is gorgeous. And the consistency, batch to batch and season to season, is something you can build your entire baking life around.
Organic Valley European Style Cultured is the dark horse that nearly stole the crown. If you love complexity and don’t mind the higher price tag, this butter makes simple recipes feel truly special. Plugrá is the professional’s choice for good reason. It’s incredibly consistent and widely available. If you bake a lot and want one single upgrade that’ll improve everything you make, start here.
One important exception to my Kerrygold pick: Pound cakes and bundt cakes. Both butters are excellent 82-85% European-style butters, but Kerrygold’s higher fat content can produce a slightly heavier, oilier crumb in pound cake formats.
Plugrá delivers the spring and lift you want from a proper bundt cake. The crumb is moist but not dense, soft but not greasy, with a more even golden color.
If you’re baking a pound cake or bundt, reach for Plugrá. For everything else, Kerrygold is my pick.
Plugrá at work in a Southern brown butter bundt cake. The crumb spring is the proof. Full recipe and the Plugrá vs. Kerrygold deep dive on the bundt cake post.
And the 80% American butters? They’re not bad. They’re not failures. For most everyday baking, the brownies, the banana bread, and the quick Wednesday night cookies, they do the job well and cost less. Don’t feel guilty about using them. I still do.
The real lesson from this taste test isn’t “spend more money.” It’s this: know your butter, and match it to what you’re making. That awareness, that intentionality, is what takes home baking from good to genuinely special.
Butter is the foundation. Treat it like one. Now go grab something golden and bake something beautiful. I’ll be right here cheering you on.
The shortbread that started it all. Breaking it open by hand so you can see what taste-testing six butters actually taught me. The crumb tells the story. For more butter guides, recipes, and the kind of content that makes your kitchen and your life feel a little more beautiful, explore justjeanniejacobs.com.
For more butter guides, recipes, and the kind of content that makes your kitchen and your life feel a little more beautiful, explore justjeanniejacobs.com.
The Butter Edit is just getting started, and I can’t wait to share what’s next with you.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best butter for baking cookies?
For butter forward cookies like shortbread or sugar cookies, a higher fat butter like Kerrygold (the only butter in my test that showed 12g fat on the nutrition label) will give you the richest flavor and most tender texture. Organic Valley Classic is a close second thanks to its complex flavor. For cookies where other flavors dominate, like chocolate chip or oatmeal raisin, a standard unsalted American butter like Land O’Lakes or Challenge works well and keeps your costs down. The key is matching the butter to how prominent its flavor will be in the finished cookie.
Does the brand of butter really make a difference in baking?
t does, and the difference is measurable. Higher fat butters contain less water, which affects gluten development, spreading, and flakiness. In our three recipe blind taste test, every tester identified significant differences between the store brand and the higher quality butters, even without knowing which was which. The gap was most dramatic in butter forward recipes like shortbread and pie crust.
Should I use salted or unsalted butter for baking?
Always unsalted. The sodium content in salted butter varies significantly between brands. Some contain nearly double the salt of others, and that inconsistency can throw off your recipe. Unsalted butter gives you complete control over flavor and salt balance, which is why virtually every baking recipe is developed with unsalted butter in mind.
Can I substitute European butter in a recipe written for American butter?
You can, but go in with your eyes open. European butter has higher butterfat and less water, which changes how doughs and batters behave. Cookies may spread more, cakes may be denser, and pastry may handle differently. Award winning pastry chef Stella Parks has noted that swapping European butter into an American recipe isn’t an upgrade so much as it is a formula change. Try it in a low stakes recipe first, not the night before a big event.
Is expensive butter worth it for baking?
It depends entirely on the recipe. For baked goods where butter is the primary flavor, things like shortbread, pound cake, buttercream, and croissants, the difference between a standard butter and a premium one is genuinely noticeable. For recipes packed with other bold flavors like brownies, spice cakes, and chocolate chip cookies, standard unsalted butter performs beautifully. My strategy is simple: splurge where butter is the star, save everywhere else.
For more of my kitchen favorites, browse the Shop My Kitchen Edit.
Every tool, board, knife, ingredient brand, and beautiful thing I keep on rotation. The pieces that make Sunday dinners feel like an event and weeknight cooking feel intentional.
