Substituting Salts in bread recipe - need help

[TheNoodleIncident]

we only have sea salt in the house - prefer it over the regular stuff

but now im baking (which i dont do often) irish soda bread, and it obviously calls for a bit of salt (1 1/2 tsp)

does anyone know what the conversion would be?? i would rather not buy table salt that im not going to use

thanks!

 

[Andy M.]

It's difficult to give a conversion without knowing the size of the sea salt grains as compared to the table salt. Ideally. you can grind some in a mini blender or mortar and pestle to approximate the grain size of table salt. Then you can measure more accurately.

Other than grain size differences, the two salts have the same saltiness.

 

[Callisto in NC]

I'm going to disagree but it's just my tastes. I think sea salt is "saltier" and stronger in flavor. For baking I would NEVER substitute sea salt for table salt. I don't know many that would. For $.50 I would buy a can of Morton's and store it for future baking. It lasts forever, even longer than sugar. Oh, and you can kill snails and slugs with Morton's too.

 

[Russellkhan]

There is no conversion that works for all types of sea salt. it all depends upon the grind of the salt that you have. This screwed me up for some time as I was trying to learn to bake bread and had only sea salt and kosher salt in the house. you could get a scale, but if you do, make sure it's accurate to tenths of a gram. What I use now is RealSalt, a sea salt with a table salt grind.

 

[Callisto in NC]

The issues is also breakdown of amount of salt to mass ratio. You need to make sure the salt blends evenly with the entire batter/dough mixture. Large chunks will glop in places were small crystals disperse throughout.

 

[mike in brooklyn]

Isn't all salt (except salt produced in a labs chemical reaction) Sea Salt?

 

[dave the baker]

Yes, but there's so many different tastes to "sea salt". It now comes from Morton's and etc. in a regular table grind, available in most, if not all, stores. I always use sea salt unless the recipe calls for kosher; there is a difference. Also, there are two classes of sea salt - cooking and finishing. Never intermix the two as they are entirely different.

 

[themonkeytree]

I used sea salt in cookies once, and it did not work out at all. It was the only salt I had on hand at the time, and I thought it would not work, but it was sea salt or no salt. So I decided to go with the sea salt. Taking a bite of a cookie and getting a piece of sea salt is not tasty, which cookies should be. So moral of the story is have more than sea salt on hand. I use sea salt as a finishing for foods, when you want to see the salt.

 

[dave the baker]

You've got to grind it!

 

[Callisto in NC]

You've got to grind it!

Yeah, but even so, it's still not the best baking product.

 

[Russellkhan]

Yeah, but even so, it's still not the best baking product.

I would argue that not all sea salt is bad for baking. I've been using RealSalt in breads, cookies, brownies, and quickbreads and having great results with it for months now.

 

[dave the baker]

NaCl = NaCl I'm not talking Fleur de Mer or Sal Greis. just regular salt. Grind it down to table grit and there's virtually no difference. The more exotic salts that have high mineral contents are not what I'm refering to; just the ordinary grocery store stuff.

 

[toni1948]

I disagree that you can't use sea salt for baking. I keep a box of fine sea salt that I use for baking and cooking. The grain is as fine as table salt. It works just fine. Been using it for more than three years now, and I haven't heard any complaints yet.

My breads, cakes and pies come out just fine.

 

[TheNoodleIncident]

thanks for all the help everyone

the salt i have is fine grain sea salt (store brand, nothing fancy) - i would say that the grain is a little bit larger than table salt, but not as big as normal sea salt

i didnt get a chance to check my comp before i baked, so i wound up using 2 tsp instead of 1 1/2 tsp - seemed to work well (in hindsight, that might have even been too much)

the final result was very good, but just barely different than normal - i think that had more to do with the fact that i used low-fat buttermilk (it's all i could find!) instead of the normal stuff.....its still super tasty and im going to eat it all

im sure others will argue me on this, but my mom has the best irish soda bread around - less "bready" and more dense than most versions, with just the right amount of raisins and caraway - toast it with a little butter and i could eat it all day

 

[Callisto in NC]

TNI ~ can you post your recipe?

 

[jim262]

As far as the conversion goes, table salt weights 10 oz. [285 grams] per cup. Weigh a quarter cup of your sea salt. If it weights 2.5 ounces [70 grams] you would use the same amount. If it weights less, use proportionally more sea salt in the recipe.

 

[TheNoodleIncident]

here ya go - enjoy! this recipe makes two loaves....you can also make muffins, but i dont remember the bake time for those

Kid’s Irish Soda Bread

​

5 cups flour
1 cup sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 ½ teaspoons salt
½ cup cold butter
2 ½ cups raisins
2 ½ cups buttermilk
2 eggs, slightly beaten
3 tablespoons caraway seeds
Preheat oven to 350°.

Sift together flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and baking soda. Cut in butter until it is the consistency of cornmeal. Add raisins and caraway seeds.

Combine the beaten eggs and buttermilk. Add to flour mixture until moist. Dough will be very sticky and thick.

Grease (pam is fine) either a 12" CI pan, or two round 9" cake pans (this is what i usually use). Bake at 350° for one hour, but start to check on it at about 50 minutes or so. The top will get pretty brown.

Let cool, if you can wait - great with butter at breakfast, lunch, snacktime and dinner.​

 

[Zereh]

Isn't all salt (except salt produced in a labs chemical reaction) Sea Salt?

Nope! Not all salt is sea salt; sea salt is marked as such. Otherwise it is dug out of land-locked "mines". Here's a quote I found on Wikipedia while looking for more info:

A salt mine is an operation involved in the extraction of salt from rock saltevaporitic deposit[1]. Areas known for their salt mines include Khewra in Pakistan, Tuzla in Bosnia, Wieliczka and Bochnia in Poland, Hallstatt and Salzkammergut in Austria, Rheinberg in Germany, Slănic in Romania, Provadiya in Bulgaria, Avery Island in Louisiana, the wich towns of Cheshire and Worcestershire in England, and the Detroit Salt Company's 1,500-acre (10 km2) subterranean complex 1,100 feet (340 m) beneath the city of Detroit.[2] The Sifto Salt Mine in Goderich, OntarioCanada is one of the largest salt mines in the world. It measures 1.5 mileskm) wide and 2 miles (3.2 km) long.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_mine#cite_note-2

Prior to the advent of the internal combustion engine and earth moving equipment, mining salt was one of the most expensive and dangerous of operations. While salt is now plentiful, before the Industrial Revolution salt was difficult to come by, and salt mining was often done by slave or prison labor. In ancient Rome, salt on the table was a mark of a rich patron (and those who sat nearer the host were above the salt, and those less favored were "below the salt"). Roman prisoners were given the task of salt mining, and life expectancy among those so sentenced was low. Roman soldiers were paid in salt, which is where the term "salary" comes from.



Even as recently as the 20th century, salt mining in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany was performed by persons being punished.


Today most salt mines are operated by large multi-national companies like Cargill and Compass Minerals.

​

Cool info. I didn't realize we had two such large ones right here on our continent.

I used Cerulean Seas Sea Salt (Fine Crystals) for all of my holiday cooking this year without changing any of the amounts called for in any of the recipes I used. It was never an issue with any of the cookies, bars or peanut brittle I made.

I'd never use my Fleur de sel (it's way to moist) in cookies or cake. But some sea salts will work perfectly fine.

 

[Andy M.]

If you go back far enough in history, all salt came from sea water.

The areas where there are land locked salt mines now were once covered by oceans millions of years ago. As the earth evolved and the continents formed and shifted, salt water evaporated leaving those huge salt deposits behind.

There are a couple of differences between "sea salt" and "regular salt" these days.

1. Table, kosher, pickling and table salts are highly purified with impurities removed. These impurities, in the form of other minerals, remain in sea salt and that's what gives the salts from different areas their distinctive tastes and colors.

2. Pickling salt is very finely ground, table salt is less finely ground. Kosher salts are coarser (some coarser than others). "Sea" salts are often coarser still.

The very coarse grains of sea salt effect their taste as compared to regular salt because they dissolve differently on the tongue. They are not saltier, they just give that impression.

ALL SALTS are around 99% sodium chloride and have the same saltiness per unit of weight, though not by measure volume because of grain size.

 

[mike in brooklyn]

If you go back far enough in history, all salt came from sea water.

The areas where there are land locked salt mines now were once covered by oceans millions of years ago. As the earth evolved and the continents formed and shifted, salt water evaporated leaving those huge salt deposits behind.

There are a couple of differences between "sea salt" and "regular salt" these days.

1. Table, kosher, pickling and table salts are highly purified with impurities removed. These impurities, in the form of other minerals, remain in sea salt and that's what gives the salts from different areas their distinctive tastes and colors.

2. Pickling salt is very finely ground, table salt is less finely ground. Kosher salts are coarser (some coarser than others). "Sea" salts are often coarser still.

The very coarse grains of sea salt effect their taste as compared to regular salt because they dissolve differently on the tongue. They are not saltier, they just give that impression.

ALL SALTS are around 99% sodium chloride and have the same saltiness per unit of weight, though not by measure volume because of grain size.

Right you are Andy - all salt originally came from evaporated sea water.
What people are calling 'sea salt' today is the result of evaporating
sea water untill all the water is gone and only the salt and minerals are left. They claim that there are more minerals than in common table salt
but that is because the salt packaging companies refine the mined salt
leaving mostly NaCl.