Old buttermilk sky

(Updated 10/17/22)

Many of you know the kitchen hack that if a baking recipe calls for buttermilk, you can take some regular milk and add lemon juice or vinegar to it. It creates a product that’s kinda-sorta like buttermilk and which performs the functions that buttermilk performs in baked goods.

A baking recipe which includes buttermilk will account for buttermilk’s acidity in terms of the leavening (baking soda and/or powder) it calls for. If you replace buttermilk with something that’s not as acidic, the recipe might not rise the way it’s supposed to. Milk plus lemon juice or vinegar approximates the pH of buttermilk, causing the leavening agents to function correctly. The lemon juice or vinegar also curdles the milk, giving it a little bit of buttermilk’s viscosity, which may be important to some recipes.

The original powdered Hidden Valley Ranch salad dressing mix was intended to be mixed with buttermilk and mayonnaise. But since most households today don’t keep buttermilk on hand on a regular basis, they quickly introduced a different version of the powder designed to be used with milk and mayonnaise. I’m sure that the use-with-milk version of the dressing mix includes acidic ingredients that function like lemon juice; it’s just a commercial version of the…