Powdered Buttermilk

I am interested in buying powdered buttermilk, but I don't recall ever seeing it. Does anyone know a local source? TIA.

Treasure Island, but call 1st!

I bought some at Dominicks. Check the flour aisle, near the baking powder. That suggests to me it is relatively widely available.

I got some at a Whole Foods. I was looking for powdered milk, but this was all they had.

I use it ALL the time. I buy it at Ultra Foods in Forest Park, but I don't remember ever having trouble finding it at Jewel. Look by the baking section, near the condensed milk. Looks like this

I use it most often in muffins, but it works for almost any baked goods recipe that call for buttermilk or sour milk. Just note that you don't re-hydrate it. You mix it in with the dry ingredients and then add the additional water to your wet ingredients.

More information about powdered buttermilk from the Saco website here.

When your great-grandmother prepared her special baked goods with buttermilk, she knew they would be light and tender every time. From experience she had learned that the golden flaked, tart liquid leftover from butter churning made a definite difference in the texture and volume of her finished products.

Most of the buttermilk-based recipes you find today were originally formulated around real buttermilk, not the cultured skim milk product available in the dairy case today. Fluid "Cultured Buttermilk" is not really buttermilk! It is a cultured skim milk that does not have the same properties as real churned buttermilk.

SACO Foods, Inc., a Wisconsin-based dairy product firm, developed a Cultured Buttermilk Blend for consumer use made from real sweet cream churned buttermilk -- the by-product of Wisconsin butter making. It was, and still is, the first real buttermilk available to the consumer in nearly 50 years.

Thanks for replying Josephine, Diannie, Jonah and Ann Fisher. I found the Saco buttermilk product at Dominick's. I had no idea it would be so easy to find.

Not specific to this post, but I've found that a mixture of 1/2 yogurt and 1/2 milk (we use 1%) makes an excellent buttermilk substitute - I tried both and prefer it; it's closer in viscosity to the real thing than powdered.

Mhays wrote:Not specific to this post, but I've found that a mixture of 1/2 yogurt and 1/2 milk (we use 1%) makes an excellent buttermilk substitute - I tried both and prefer it; it's closer in viscosity to the real thing than powdered.

Do you use a whole milk, low fat, or non-fat plain yogurt? Is it basically just a 1:1 ratio?

I also use yogurt and milk to substitute buttermilk....just made waffles this weekend. I use non-fat, or low fat yogurt and skim milk with fine results. For the waffles, I used non-fat greek yogurt.

Pucca wrote:

Mhays wrote:Not specific to this post, but I've found that a mixture of 1/2 yogurt and 1/2 milk (we use 1%) makes an excellent buttermilk substitute - I tried both and prefer it; it's closer in viscosity to the real thing than powdered.

Do you use a whole milk, low fat, or non-fat plain yogurt? Is it basically just a 1:1 ratio?

I use non-fat yogurt and 1% milk, just because they're what I tend to have around and yes, a 1:1 ratio. I'm guessing the fat content is more about preference than utility. Works beautifully for the Cook's Illustrated biscuits, for marinating fried chicken, etc.

Funny how yogurt rarely spoils in my fridge, but buttermilk often sits there until it's a good month past the sell-by date. Of course, I use yogurt when baking (notably, CI's banana bread) and in the summer for smoothies, salad dressings and tzaziki, so I can see where it's used up more often.

I was also curious to know if anyone here has tried adding vinegar to milk to create buttermilk? How similar is it to the real thing? Did you use whole milk, 1% or skim?

I've also done that (with lemon juice) it seems to work OK for baking muffins and the like, when you're using the buttermilk (or its substitute) as an acid to react with baking soda or powder. Like before, I probably used 1% milk because that's what we keep in the house. (Hmm...theme going on here; how many ways can MHays cheat on one ingredient?) It tastes and looks pretty much like you'd guess: milk with lemon juice in it.

It doesn't work when you're doing something that needs the viscosity or flavor of buttermilk: brining chicken, or buttermilk biscuits. Acidulated milk doesn't coat the chicken properly and just pools in the bottom of the bag or pan - and it doesn't flavor the biscuits properly; this is where I use the yogurt/milk mixture instead.

HI,

Buttermilk by definition is without fat. However the vinegar into milk is a substitution thus any milk will do. If you were running out to buy milk to acidify, then why wouldn't you just buy the buttermilk. I would just use whatever milk you have on hand.

If this is for a baked product using baking soda, then the acid in the vinegar is used to fully activate the baking soda. If you forgo the buttermilk or vinegar, then the baking soda won't be fully activated and there will be a chemical taste to the food product.

If this is for a baked product using baking powder, then the buttermilk is there for flavor. You can get away with using sweet milk because the baking powder is 1/4 teaspoon baking soda with the rest is acid to activate and cornstarch to keep it dry.

I realize this is more information than you may have wanted.

Regards,

Cathy2 - No that wasn't too much information for me. It's been a long time since I have taken chemistry classes, and now that I find myself baking more frequently, this was helpful.

Mhays - I'm with you. Living by myself, I waste so much money buying ingredients when I only need 1/2 cup! I try scouring recipes to finish that ingredient before the best before date. Frankly, I'm sick of throwing away cartons of buttermilk!

Pucca,

You really should consider the dried buttermilk or experiment freezing the extra buttermilk in quantities you are likely to use in the future. In my house, we just drink the balance.

Regards,

Opened buttermilk keeps a ridiculously long time, however. I purchase it by the quart and manage to use it up over about a month or so.

In our household, buttermilk ends up in baked goods mostly, including scones, muffins and coffee cake. The kids rarely leave enough scones behind to worry about freezing them but that's always an option.

My favorite chocolate cake uses it, too. Actually the recipe says, "buttermilk or sour milk"