Substituting Vinegar with Buttermilk

[packrat79]

I have a muffin recipe which uses works on the vinegar+baking soda principle, and I'm wondering if I could substitute the vinegar with buttermilk instead. One resource suggests using a ratio of 1 teaspoon vinegar to 1 cup buttermilk. How would this affect the the finished product?
Thanks.

 

[Chopstix]

Hi Packrat, I'm not sure how one can subsitute buttermilk for vinegar. I also don't understand the ratio cited by your source. Does it mean that if your muffin recipe has 1 tsp vinegar that you can sub 1 C buttermilk instead? Sounds very wrong to me.

I know you can make a substitute for buttermilk by mixing 1 T of vinegar and 1 C milk. This means there's very little acid in buttermilk in the first place and in order to approximate the equivalent amount of vinegar to substitute, you'll have to use a whole lot of buttermilk. In which case I don't think you'll end up with anything ressembling muffins as your finished product...

Or maybe I don't get your question at all...

 

[auntdot]

Chopstix I agree. I didn't reply when I first saw the post because it confused me and do not do baking at all.

But the little I do I know it is dangerous to alter volumes without a darned good reason, and be prepared for failure if you do.

 

[BettyR]

I have a muffin recipe which uses works on the vinegar+baking soda principle, and I'm wondering if I could substitute the vinegar with buttermilk instead. One resource suggests using a ratio of 1 teaspoon vinegar to 1 cup buttermilk. How would this affect the the finished product?
Thanks.

I sub back and forth all the time. If the recipe calls for 1 cup of buttermilk and I don't have any I use 2 tablespoons of vinegar plus enough milk to make 1 cup.

If the recipe calls of vinegar + milk then you would sub an equal amount of buttermilk.

If you have too much acid it will not matter, if you have too much baking soda you will get a bitter taste; there has to be enough acid there to neutralize all of the soda.

1/2 teaspoon of baking soda requires at least 1 tablespoon of vinegar or 1 cup of buttermilk; so if a recipe calls for 3/4 teaspoon of baking soda then you will need 1-1/2 cups of buttermilk or 1 cup of buttermilk plus 1 teaspoon of vinegar.

If you were using vinegar and sweet milk then I would use 2 tablespoons of vinegar plus the milk. It is better to over do the acid and be on the safe side than to risk the bitter taste of too much baking soda.

 

[packrat79]

I considered the matter of volume too, and my theory was something like this; since the recipe calls for 1 cup regular milk, just substitute buttermilk for both the regular milk and vinegar. Some math will be required to figure out the amount needed, but that shouldn't be a problem.
One batch of muffins isn't much of a gamble, so I'll have to give this a try sometime.
Thanks anyway for the advice.

 

[Chopstix]

Ok, now that you mentioned 1 cup milk, the issue is clearer now. So your recipe has milk+vinegar and this is what you want to subsitute with buttermilk. In which case it looks alright since your milk quantity seems significant enough. I assume the vinegar called for is something like 1T.

 

[2belucile]

BUTTERMILK - Latelly I have beginning to bake, still have a lot to learn. I have seen that some recipes call for buttermilk and here just learn that when a recipe calls for buttermilk it can be substitued by 1 cup milk+1 tbsp vinegar.
What I would like to know is : What really is buttermilk? is just sour milk? sour light cream?
Thanks for any information.....

 

[PieSusan]

Buttermilk use to be the milk left over in the butter churn when one sat and churned butter. Ever get to do that as a kid? Boy, I use to think it was fun! In the old days nothing went to waste. Today buttermilk is a manufactured product like cheese. A lactic acid culture is added to milk (often low fat or non fat milk) and it is fermented and kept at a low temp. It is suppose to be more easily digested than milk.

There is also a powdered version that one can buy for baking purposes.