Buttermilk

[willy]

Don't know how many of you all like buttermilk,,,BUT I just learned recently that you can make your own ...cheap!.
Just buy a pint of cultured butter milk and mix it  =1 part butter milk with 3 parts  of 2%, skim, or whole milk,,Place in open jar and cover with towel ,,let stand on counter for 24-48 hours,, The longer it sits the more bite it will have..When you take the towel off,,, it will look like it has jelled,,A quick stir and it will turn into a smooth creamy buttermilk..Put a lid on it and refridgerate it..And when you get down to about a 1/4 jar left,,Just add more milk and start over..

[Delmonico]

Neither is real buttermilk.   You just passed the lactic bacteria from skim milk that had lactic bacteria added to sour it.

Real buttermilk is the liquid left after cream is churned into butter and can be sweet if from fresh cream, soured if the cream was soured before churning.  Sweet buttermilk was what most people who drank buttermilk in the past drank.  Soured buttermilk is used to !ake quick breads using baking soda.

The soda provides the alkaline and the soured buttermilk provides the acid, the resulting chemical reaction produces CO2 which leaves the bread product.

[Sir Charles deMouton-Black]

My Dad was raised on a farm in Sweden. He made a form of countertop sour milk, he called it Felbunki, just by leaving unpasteurized milk with the said tea towel on top and Bob's Yer Uncle. Somewhere between yogurt and buttermilk. When all retail milk had to be pasteurized, Mom found out that mixing up some milk powder worked just fine. Dad loved Buttermilk. A favorite Saturday outing for us boys was to Walk with Dad down to the local Dairy outlet and share a tall glass of fresh, chilled buttermilk.

[Oregon Bill]

I wonder if my dislike of buttermilk as a beverage has to do with sweet vs. sour. I sure like to make bread with the stuff, using a James Beard recipe.