From my understanding buttermilk is the milk that is left over after butter was made from it. If so then the name really should be de-butter milk. As for why somethings calls for it - I don’t know.
Commercial buttermilk is made by adding bacterial cultures to skim milk. It hasn’t had anything to do with making butter for decades.
Buttermilk, being basically sour milk, is mainly important for adding acid to the recipe. Baking soda and some other leavenings require a slightly acid environment to work.
So if I’d not want to use vinegar to sour or make acidic,wouldn’t a substitution of baking powder (acid and alkali) for baking soda (the only leavener in the recipe) work just as well?
Yes, if you know how. Baking powder is fundamentally different from baking soda, and requires different amounts and different timing. Substituting one-for-one gives you (IIRC) a rather “belchy” confection with huge holes in it.
Thanks again.I’ll stick with the recipe.In a long ago experiment with pancakes from scratch the baking powder was not of the right measure.My GF and I started burping almost immediately after eating
<hijacking own thread>BTW-what could be a bandaid for that condition?Things like Digel make me burp.
Buttermilk is great stuff. It makes pancakes very moist and delicious.
As others have said, it makes baking soda (or baking powder) work better, so you don’t have to add as much of them.
The reason that some recipes are set in stone is that baking is essentially chemistry. Chemical compounds do a little dance, make a little love, and the resulting end products in the proper amounts lead to the perfect baked goods. You mess with the ratios of the basic ingredients at your peril. Experiment if you want, but you might end up with a flat, inedible end product or another disaster (as your inadvertent baking powder experiement shows.) Also, unlike other cooking, when you’re baking, you can’t peer into the pot, notice that something is going awry, and hastily add more water or salt or whatever.
Buttermilk is great for settling upset stomachs and it is a really good aid to digestion. Besides all that, cold buttermilk is one of the best treats you will ever have. Give it a fair try before turning up your nose.
I do believe that things like digel are supposed to make you burb. That’s how it relieves the gas, by forcing it out of your system. But if gas is a problem, ask your friendly neighborhood pharmacist for some charcoal capsules. They don’t require a scrip, but are usually sold at the pharmacy, not on the shelf. Taking a couple before eating something that is likely to give you gas should help.
The crap they sell in stores isn’t buttermilk at all!
Whoever came up with that sour concoction should be hauled out and made to drink the nasty stuff.
Real buttermilk is the cloudy/clear remnaints from the action of making butter from sweet cream. Real buttermilk is sweet and refreshing and doesn’t make you want to retch!
I made the recipe using vinegar w/lowfat milk and after about 6 muffins,I declare it a success.Looks like I’ll be eating them a couple days tho,the scaled down recipe was supposed to yield 6 portions (in a cake),I got 18 muffins! They are great.
