I found a pretty good substitute for buttermilk for baking!

[thewayne]

It's not like I discovered it - I wish! I subscribe to Milk Street Magazine, Christopher Kimball's revenge for being unjustly turfed from America's Test Kitchen. I received a recipe in email recently that looked interesting, but it also included an article link about a "great substitute for buttermilk: kefir".

Color me interested!

As far as I'm concerned, since I don't live near a good dairy, there is no more such a thing as good buttermilk. (most people would argue that there has never been such a thing as good buttermilk!) I loved the buttermilk that I had as a kid and wanted it for certain applications, but the garbage they sold in the stores here was just that - garbage. The stuff they sell today is milk with an added enzyme culture that is just gross.

Well, Kimball's people had an epiphany and did some testing, substituting kefir 1:1 in recipes that called for buttermilk, testing it against a horror that some people use where you mix 1 tablespoon of white vinegar into a cup of 2% milk and let it sit for 5 minutes. They made biscuits, pancakes, yellow cake, and cornbread. The kefir worked perfectly in all applications, the only case where there was a noticeable difference was in the yellow cake where it was a bit denser but still had good flavor. The vinegar abomination was a fail in everything except the cake - go figger.

I've bought decent buttermilk from Sprouts in Las Cruces, but I don't get there very often and it doesn't last forever, so I added kefir to my shopping list, and tonight I went shopping. And I found some! It was actually a plain, unsweetened kefir 'smoothie' and it has a taste not unlike buttermilk - somewhat sour/astringent. My test recipe: Zatarain's cheddar garlic biscuit mix! I have a special butter recipe to make them quite a bit like Red Lobster biscuits.

And the recipe came out perfect. The biscuits were great, rose perfectly, flavor was excellent. I think the kefir adds a bit of zing, which is what I wanted. And smothered in the butter they are appallingly good! I finished off the gazpacho that I made last week for dinner, having perhaps a biscuit too many, which sometimes happens right after I make them.

So if you're like me and you sometimes need buttermilk but can't find a good one, try plain, unsweetened kefir! I don't know if it'll work in all applications, but it definitely worked for this biscuit mix.

https://www.177milkstreet.com/2019/02/buttermilk-substitute-kefir

Comments

[moonhare]

We started buying the Saco dried buttermilk on a recommendation from America’s Test Kitchen (Kimbell, again). Considering how infrequently we use it, this was a great substitute for trying to find fresh, or experiment making, this ingredient.

[thewayne]

I'll look in to that, just added it to my Amazon wish list.  I wonder what would happen if you mixed it with milk or kefir?

[terribleturnip]

I've kept that in my pantry -- it's a decent shelf stable sub. But, I"d go with even regular store buttermilk if that was reasonable option. Mixing the Saco with milk or kefir -- would be fine in any sauce, but for baking, would make me nervous -- you're sort of doubling down on fats and proteins. So unclear how that's going to affect the sugar/liquid take up, the protein matrix. I'm not a good enough baker to know how that would change the chemistry.

[thewayne]

Excellent point about the increased protein.  I have frequently substituted milk or buttermilk when baking mixes have called for water with no problem, but doubling up using milk to mix a buttermilk powder would be pretty much squaring the protein.