The title says it all really. Cakes, bread and pastry often call for a tiny amount of salt; What’s it for?
Unsalted bread tastes really flat. But I omit salt in all sweet recipes and no one has ever complained.
It’s not a matter of flavor – I make bread and pastry without salt and it tastes delicious.
It’s used to limit the rising. A touch of salt keeps the yeast under control; otherwise it can rise too much. But you can do without it if you want to risk the yeast rising out of the pan.
There are books about the chemistry of cooking, for those college courses in food science.
I can’t answer this question, but salt makes a lot of changes, like the temperature things boil and freeze, whether pasta sticks and egg shells crack when boiled, if I recall.
Salt in yeast breads serves two purposes, as mentioned above: flavor and controlling the yeast and strengthening the gluten.
In other baked goods, it’s there for flavor. Yes, I know there are people who bake without it and like the end result, but MOST people prefer even sweet baked goods that contain salt. It should not be enough for you to say, “Oh, this has salt!” but salt brings out and opens up other flavors.
Yes, it’s a matter of flavor–you may have conditioned yourself to tolerate saltless baked goods, but salt is fundamental to a bread that tastes good. You can no more make a good loaf of bread without salt than you can without flour, water, or yeast (yeah, yeah, unleavened breads).
I have no doubt your baked goods taste good without salt, but I also have no doubt that they would taste even better with salt.
Of course, if you’re cooking for someone that needs to be on a low sodium diet, than that’s understandable, but if not, then try adding that pinch or two back in, you’d be surprised the difference it can make.
Even cookies, which are WAY sweeter than bread, need salt in the recipe.
Even if you are cooking for someone on a low-sodium diet, a single pinch of salt in an entire loaf of bread is negligible.
That sounds really interesting. Do they have a ‘Chemistry of Cooking for Dummies’?? A book written for students of food science would probably be beyond me but a similar book for the layperson would be perfect.
Don’t nearly ALL recipes call for salt?
Sure seems true of most of them I have tried.
Salt enhances flavor, whether that flavor be savory, sweet, etc. Foods only taste salty when you use too much salt. Most people would be surprised to know how flat their desserts taste when no salt is used.
I’ve heard great things about BakeWise: The Hows and Whys of Successful Baking with Over 200 Magnificent Recipes by Shirley Corriher (frequent contributor to Good Eats.)
There is one, not sure if my googlefu is up to it …
bingo
Something happened recently that really highlighted the effect salt has on flavour. I’d cooked a steak and put quite a lot of pepper over it then had a mouthful. I decided it needed some salt, so I put some on and had another mouthful. It tasted MORE peppery but not salty, yet I no longer felt it needed salt.
Unless of course it’s bacon salt 
I’ll get my coat
Besides the other suggestions, the books “I’m Just Here for the Food” and “I’m Just Here for More Food” by Alton Brown are very readable “chemistry of food”-type primers.
I believe you, but I wonder then why so many recipes calls for unsalted butter. Why would the salt in butter be different?
You want to control the amount of salt. With salted butter, you don’t know how much you’re dealing with.