Great trick. I would probably split the stick of butter longways in two before I rolled it out to save some arm strength. Something I've done in the past : since all your ingredients when you are baking should be at room temp for maximum rise,eggs and butter can both be an issue. I run a bowl of hot tap water, place my eggs in it, then put a small plate on top of it. I dice my butter and spread it out on the plate on top of the eggs. By the time I need them, they are both closer to room temp.

Ooh, I can't wait to try this one. Thank you!

When creaming butter straight from the fridge, I put the butter and sugar in my metal mixing bowl, and float the bowl in warm water in the sink. If the butter seems to be getting too soft, I just take the bowl out and put it on the counter.

bonus - this is basically what you have to do to make puff pastry, danishes and croissants. So if you master this - think of all the yummyness you can bake!

I do the same thing only I use my KitchenAid and just let the beater beat the butter for a little bit and it softens it right up!

I wonder if you can do the same thing with cream cheese (which causes me more problems than butter).

Don't see why not. ~Elise

I use the microwave but I do it the Cooks' Illustrated way - 1 minute per stick on 10% power level. Works great.

You are my hero! I'll try this next time I bake.

One trick I had up my sleeve was to cut up the butter and pop it in an oven that's cooling down after being used.

Great tip! My own tack is to cut the butter into cubes and then put into the microwave for 10-second increments, as many as needed to soften. Works like a charm for anyone without a rolling pin.

Really? This is great -- I'm sure I'll be trying this in the near future. How did you figure this one out?
I suppose you could do the same with cream cheese.

A pastry chef friend of mine showed me the trick. She told me that using a microwave to soften the butter is not the best approach, so she prefers the rolling pin. ~Elise

This afternoon when I went to make cookies with our grandson we had cold, hard butter. We couldn't find his mother's rolling pin, so we used a big round bottle of crème de Cacao. Worked like a charm to flatten and soften the butter! Max thought it was awesome that his grandma was mentioned in your blog. (His peanut butter chocolate chip cookies were awesome, too!)

Hi Evie! Oh, that's so cute. Tell Max that his grandma is the star of Simply Recipes. We all have you to thank for this one. :-) ~Elise

I get so frustrated softening butter. I live in an old uninsulated house, where all the kitchen cabinets are on an outside wall. In the colder months the temperature in the cabinets is around 50 degrees F or lower. I can't beat butter in a bowl on the counter or it hardens back up and I can't knead bread well on the counter either. To soften my butter I sometimes put it on the top shelf of my flourescent grow lights (I grow lettuce year round) They put off just enough heat to keep it beatable, unlike my countertops.

Butter doesn't need to be refrigerated. I keep mine in a covered butter dish on the counter-- it is always soft! I also keep sticks in the freezer so I am ready to make pie crusts when the desire hits!

Butter doesn't need to be refrigerated as long as you eat it up before it gets rancid. We always keep a stick of butter out in a covered butter dish for spreading on bread. But we also go through it pretty quickly. ~Elise

Did not work for me. The butter needs to be softer than right-from-the-fridge temperature.

I tried this last night, and the butter was too hard - I could make a couple dents in the butter with a couple good whacks from the rolling pin. But could not get it to roll at all. I used typical American stick butter (8 TBs per stick) - Organic Sweet Cream (unsalted) style.

Even after 20 minutes, it was still too solid to roll.

So I changed gears, and used a recipe that called for melted butter (Alice Medrich's) instead of the traditional softened butter.

How long do you recommend that it sit out before rolling it out?

Sounds like you keep your fridge very cold. Or your house. Or perhaps you are storing your butter in the coldest part of your refrigerator. We store our butter in the fridge door, which is considered one of the warmer areas of a refrigerator. I do not need to let the butter sit out at all before rolling it out. But I do first press down hard on the rolling pin in the center of the stick of butter, to flatten it a bit before attempting to roll it out. ~Elise

Tip: If you can't find your rolling pin, or you don't have one (shame on you!) try using any canned vegetable in the pantry as a substitute rolling pin; after all, the butter is covered by the wax paper, so who will know? I use a can to hit/break up walnuts and pecans instead of using a chopper or food processor by putting the nuts in a zip-top bag, and hitting the bag while it is on the cutting board. Works great and NO CLEAN-UP!

This is why people have children around. For every stick of butter needed, one child can hold it while the rest of the ingredients are prepared. By the time creaming is ready to begin, the butter is warmed.

Elise, I love your blog. I have great results with everything I have tried - except this! (It's most likely my fault though). I smashed and bruised my finger under the rolling pin doing this!

Maybe my butter was just too cold still, but I really couldn't get a good fix on it and the rolling pin ended up slipping off the butter and onto the counter with my finger underneath.

So, moral of this story: be careful doing this! :)

I just slice the stick, as thin as my patience allows, and it's perfectly soft by the time I have all the other ingredients measured (mise en place). I should add that I slice it longwise, so there's only about an inch of slicing to do as opposed to 5 inches crosswise.
It's the greenest way to go: doesn't use any electricity and there's no tree-felling involved either!

Thinning it out and working it allows the cold butter to absorb more heat from the surrounding air, expanding its molecular structure.

Yay refrigeration theory applied to cooking!

Interesting tip! I will try this next time I bake. I've tried melting butter for recipes that call for softened butter before, and the texture was markedly different when I actually took the time to use softened butter instead. While I usually do what one commenter said - namely, leaving the butter (in a glass bowl) on the stove to soften as the oven preheats - it's always good to have more than one way to get soft butter besides that. Two questions: first, would you recommend a wooden or synthetic rolling pin, and second, is there proof that leaving butter out all the time (before it becomes "rancid," a time window that I don't know about because I've never really thought about it before) is sanitary?

The second question is because my mom always says that it's bad to leave butter out all the time, but she remembers "back in the old days" when her grandmother always left butter out (probably in one of those cute little crocks you linked to!).

Great questions. First on the rolling pin, since you are putting the butter between layers of wax paper, it makes absolutely no difference. You can even use a wine bottle. Second, fat is a preservative. Butter will eventually get rancid, left out or even in the fridge. When I was living alone and rarely eating butter, I would just keep a stick in the freezer. When we leave butter out, it is in a closed ceramic container, otherwise it may attract bugs and absorb odors. ~Elise

Thank you so much for this tip. I have used it numerous times and think it is the best baking tip I have ever received.

This tip is great! I've done it with foil as well, we ran out of wax paper. It worked fine with the foil, although I had to be careful not to rip it. Thanks for the tip!