i use both ... salted for spreading on toast or some other breads and a little cooking... unsalted for baking or cooking when i'm adding a bunch of s&p myself!

Boy, do I miss French butter!

Cultured unsalted butter is what I have most of in the fridge, but my husband likes to have salted on hand as well. In France, they sell salted and "demi-sel" butter, which is just lightly salted. The best salted French butters use fleur-de-sel, and so you get these wonderful crunchy bites!

I use lightly salted because it's the only kind the farm I go to for dairy products sells.

Salted for eating, unsalted for baking and cooking.

@ mschatelaine: *sigh* Beurre Salé de Noirmoutier... How I miss it too!

I like my sweet baked goods a little salty, and plus, salted butter just tastes better to me!

Is that photo of a little contraption for measuring out a tablespoon of butter??

I keep all unsalted on hand usually, but every time I have toast with salted I resolve to fix this.

i grew up with salted butter and never knew there was an alternative. if a recipe specifically states unsalted, i will buy it for that purpose, but otherwise i stick with salted for everything.

I keep unsalted only because most recipes call for unsalted, especially in baking. I lack basic math skills to figure out how much to reduce salt by if using salted butter. Also, I figure keeping unsalted butter is a way to consume less sodium. As for butter on toast, my husband likes to sprinkle his own amount of salt (and a little bit of sugar too!).

I like slightly salted butter on bread, and I use unsalted for baking.

@JAMES MANLI: Wait, what?

I am with Pearmelon. I buy a slab of Kerrygold salted butter in March and quarter it and freeze 3 quarters and use on my savory caraway soda bread and rye/cheese bread and any other homemade bread or muffins or cornbread I make all year.
I use unsalted butter from a local creamery for everything else. If I am using an old recipe, I'll just add a tiny bit more salt.

Salted for cooking/toast, unsalted for baking. Kerrygold when I'm feelin' fancy-ish.

Unsalted only and, when I want salt on my butter, I dress it with salt before eating... there's nothing quite like butter & salt (and maybe some fresh chives) on freshly baked bread still warm from the oven.

Unsalted for general purposes or baking. Salted if I want to splurge a bit. We are lucky enough to ahve access to grass fed cow butter so I don't worry about how much we go through.

Salted! Unsalted butter just tastes lame to me. I'm probably going to get kidney stones, but I don't care :)

We only keep salted. But, we also know what our sodium levels are, and eat very little processed food (thank you, corn allergy). For baking, we taste before adding any salt called for in the recipe.

the saltier the better! my god it's delicious. i also miss the french stuff.

Salted, mostly. I'll buy some unsalted if I know I'm going to be doing a lot of baking or if I'm baking something I'm nervous about (new recipe for big occasion, etc.), but for the most part, I just use salted in everything,

I dunno why they even *sell* salted butter...

I used to be an unsalted butter girl all the way, but as I've gotten older, I've come to prefer salted butter on toast. For cooking and baking I use unsalted - easier to control the salt content that way.

I do sometimes use salted butter when making frosting. My kids love some of the recipes in the Cake Mix Doctor books, and she recommends using salted butter for frosting.

i've heard salted butter isn't as good because the salt can hide imperfections in the butter

Unsalted on hand for baking. Kerrygold for pure awesomeness. Salted, whipped on hand for potatoes and toast...and currently matzoh. It just spreads better :P

Is it just me, or have recipes only started specifying 'unsalted' in recent years??

When I was growing up (the '80's), we only ever had salted butter. I only buy salted butter, and use it in everything, including baking. Does it really make that much difference to the taste?

I grew up on unsalted butter and it is only when I moved to Canada that I ever saw salted butter. Needless to say, I am still puzzled by its existence and cannot find a reason to use it in anything.

To me, salted butter tastes more like vinegary butter. I don't believe salted butter is actually made of salt and butter. I use salt on unsalted butter when I feel like a slice of crusty bread, and there is a world of difference.

I buy unsalted only. I can always add salt, if desired and this way I have complete control over the salt flavor and sodium content of my food.

I grew up in an all-salted-butter home, but a few years ago I switched to unsalted for cooking/baking and like it much better. I also started buying much nicer salted butter just for toast. Since I use so much less of it, I can spend more on it. And wow, really good salted butter is so nice! I can't go back to cheap salted butter. The cheap unsalted is just fine for baking though so my splurge seems to be working out.

I grew up with only salted butter in the house, so that's what I always have on hand. If a recipe calls for unsalted, I'll use salted and then skip or reduce the amount of salt the recipe calls for.

My mom always only had salted butter (as I remember it, anyway), so that's what I always had and used in my own apartment--then I started getting more into cooking and started learning about how using unsalted meant you could control the salt in a recipe, etc, etc. Now I keep both--unsalted for cooking and baking, and salted for spreading on things like toast or breads or whatever else...or when I run out of unsalted!