B Bread with no buttermilk ?

curly from cork

What a twit I am, headed off to the shops for buttermilk, came home with the wholemeal flour but forgot the buttermilk. All I have in the house is low fat milk. Will this do and should the quantities be the same ?

Dizzyblonde

You can add a tablespoon of vinegar to a cup measure of milk and use that as a substitute. If you haven't got vinegar you could just use ordinary milk.

* 1 cup = 8fl oz = 250ml

huskerdu

I add the juice of half a lemon to the milk and leave it for 10 minutes to go lumpy. I haven't bothering buying buttermilk for about a year now, I use the lemon juice all the time.

The proportions are about the same, but when making soda bread, the amount of milk isnt always the same anyway. I just add milk until its soft enough.

rubadub

The buttermilk is acidic and reacts with the baking soda to give off carbon dioxide and so 'rise' the bread, so you need no yeast. So any acid like vinegar or lemon juice will work. You can buy citric acid granules in asian supermarkets which would probably impart less taste.

I use lemon juice & baking soda in pancake mixes, it can double the volume and make them nice & light.

curly from cork

Well its made and tasted... Thank you everyone for your help
I used LF milk, one egg, bread soda, wholemeal flour , a little b sugar.
TBH I think its quite tasteless and a litle dry. Not sure why , I cooked it at 180 for about 50 mins.
It will be ok with jam on it

huskerdu

curly from cork wrote: »

Well its made and tasted... Thank you everyone for your help
I used LF milk, one egg, bread soda, wholemeal flour , a little b sugar.
TBH I think its quite tasteless and a litle dry. Not sure why , I cooked it at 180 for about 50 mins.
It will be ok with jam on it

Is this the same recipe that you normally use with Buttermilk ?
Did you add lemon or vinegar to the milk ?
Did you use all wholemeal flour ?
Did it rise much ?

If it is dry, but light in texture then the mixture was probably not wet enough.

If it is a bit heavy and chewy and dry, and it didn't rise much, it is probably that there was not enough raising agent to get enough chemical reaction going which means that there was not enough acid and alkaline ( lemon juice and baking soda).

If you used all wholemeal flour, it might just be a bit heavy. I use a bit of plain flour to lighten it.

curly from cork

same recipe I didnt use vinegar or lemon. It didnt rise very much , and I used all wholemeal flour. I think lesson is dont forget the buttermilk next time !

Mellor

curly from cork wrote: »

same recipe I didnt use vinegar or lemon. It didnt rise very much , and I used all wholemeal flour. I think lesson is dont forget the buttermilk next time !

It didn't work because you didn't use vinegar or lemon. Plain milk isn't acidic enough so didn't reaction as much with the bread soda.

huskerdu

Mellor wrote: »

It didn't work because you didn't use vinegar or lemon. Plain milk isn't acidic enough so didn't reaction as much with the bread soda.

I agree. This was said twice above, You cant replace buttermilk with milk.
You need to also replace the acid in buttermilk with lemon juice or vinegar.

rubadub

curly from cork wrote: »

TBH I think its quite tasteless

I wonder if this is since the baking soda wasn't neutralised. Baking soda is a deodourising agent, you can leave a plate of it in your fridge to absorb smells like garlic or onions, it can be put in shoes too. I wonder if it could have absorbed or neutralised some of the taste.

curly from cork

Im ploughing through it anyway, never one to admit its not great ! Thanks for help will def stick to recipe in future !

Little Alex

I've also made soda-type bread before with plain yogurt and even tomato passata instead of buttermilk. They both turned out pretty good. The three of them (buttermilk, yogurt and tomato juice) are all similarly acidic.