What’s the best buttermilk for baking?
Cookbook author Cheryl Day calls herself a “buttermilk purist.” When she bakes, she uses cultured buttermilk made with nonhomogenized, additives-free whole milk. “It’s low-temperature, vat-pasteurized,” she says, and praises its rich mouthfeel. “I buy it from a local dairy with happy cows.”
Those details make all the difference. Commercial cultured buttermilks with lower fat and additives don’t have that “rich, pure flavor,” Day says. “There’s a certain taste that you want, especially with something as simple as a biscuit or a yellow cake. When you add a bunch of stuff, it’s almost like overcompensating for the flavor you’re not getting.”
Baking is essentially the world’s most delicious chemical reaction, and buttermilk is prized for how its acidity interacts with alkaline leaveners like baking soda. The reaction produces carbon dioxide, helping cakes, waffles, and biscuits rise. Using lower-fat buttermilk with additives affects how baked goods spread and brown. “It changes the texture,” Day says.
Renata Ameni agrees. The executive pastry chef and partner at Birdee in Brooklyn, New York, uses slow-cultured buttermilk from local dairy Ronnybrook to make the bakery’s chocolate and red velvet cakes, as well as a buttermilk panna cotta. “It makes cakes more tender,” she says. “Even if you’re not baking it, like in the panna cotta, you can tell.”
Buttermilk in savory cooking
Buttermilk adds tang and acidity to mashed potatoes, makes salad dressings (like homemade ranch) creamy, and adds moisture to buttermilk biscuits and cornbread.
In parts of the American South, buttermilk is enjoyed as a beverage. Some cooks pour it over toasted day-old cornbread to eat like cereal.
It’s especially effective as a marinade. In recipes for fried chicken, country-fried steak, and more, the lactic acid in buttermilk gently denatures proteins, reshaping their collagen structures and increasing moisture retention without turning the meat mushy. As a result, buttermilk-marinated meats cook up tender, tasty, and extra-juicy.
Charred chicken breasts coated in a tangy dry rub sit atop a fresh salad of tomatoes, cucumber, and onions.
What’s a good substitute for buttermilk?
While many argue there is no substitute for buttermilk, you can swap in kefir or stir water or whole milk into plain yogurt until it reaches buttermilk-adjacent consistency. In a pinch, Day has thinned sour cream with water.
