Baking with Extra Virgin Olive Oil Instead of Butter – Part II
I flew to New York at the end of June to attend the Fancy Food Show, which focuses on specialty foods from around the world. While in the Big Apple, I had a great dinner with my sister. We met up at a nice French restaurant called Le Monde, which specializes in cuisine from the Loire Valley. It’s on Broadway.
The meal lead to my sister’s raising the idea of her baking our mother’s delicious Swiss Christmas cookies once the holidays roll around. Here’s the kicker: My sister is interested in using extra virgin olive oil instead of butter to make the cookies.
That spurred me to want to revisit the topic of substituting extra virgin olive oil for butter when baking. It’s a subject we often get asked about, and we’ve posted olive oil baking recipes such as the Pumpkin Streusel Bread pictured here.
I want to alert you to a great book on olive oil, The Passionate Olive (Ballantine Books, 2005), which offers a table detailing how to convert butter to olive oil in baking and cooking.
The author, Carol Firenze, is passionate about olive oil (as her book title suggests). I recently met Carol at an extra virgin olive oil conference. She’s a great source of information on all things olive oil, including baking with EVOO. Carol recalled to us how her mother, now 90, adapted her biscotti recipe.
“She makes wonderful biscotti. About 20 years ago she started using olive oil instead of butter,” Carol said. Her mother, Gigi, taught her that olive oil can be used as a substitute for butter in just about anything you can cook or bake.
Here’s Carol’s table detailing how to convert butter to olive oil:
Butter Olive Oil
1 teaspoon ¾ teaspoon
1 tablespoon 2 ¼ teaspoons
¼ cup 3 tablespoons
1/3 cup ¼ cup
½ cup ¼ cup + 2 tablespoons
2/3 cup ½ cup
¾ cup ½ cup + 1 tablespoon
1 cup ¾ cup
We’ll post the recipe for Carol’s biscotti very soon, along with other tips and recipes from her book. Stay tuned.
Bon appétit,
Claude S. Weiller
Vice President of Sales & Marketing
California Olive Ranch
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August 19th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
I think it is great that we have alternatives in oils for baking. However, my concern is that olive oil (even the light ones)will go rancid during the baking process, making the oils more toxic than beneficial.
I did some research and I found that the smoke point for olive oils is around 230 degrees C. Most of the cookies I bake, the temp is at the very least 250 C. Perhaps the temp is higher when baking because there are more ingredients involved. But I have not come across a chart that gives a smoke point for baking. But even if they are the same my cookies would technically go rancid as anyway.
Any feedback would be helpful.
Thank you.
N.
February 26th, 2010 at 11:48 am
Thanks for your comment. Here’s a good response about EVOO and baking from trained olive oil taster Nancy Ash: “The temperature of the oven or stove top is not the same as the temperature of the food being cooked. For instance when you roast a turkey in an oven set at 325 degrees F, the heat does not make the turkey also 325 degrees. Instead you roast the turkey at 325 degrees until it reaches the temperature of 165 degrees (or so). Also think about grilling over fire. It takes a while for the food to reach a desired temperature even though the cooking medium is an open flame.”
In terms of the smoke point, please note that high-quality EVOO has a higher smoke point than other oils. You can check out our chef blog to get more information on the topic: http://bit.ly/bAisyF