plain yogurt? i've substituted yogurt for buttermilk before with delicious results, though admittedly i'm a bit reckless when it comes to baking! ;)

Since you didn't specify the amount of regular milk above, I'd just like to clarify for Tara that it is 1 cup of regular milk mixed with 1 tablespoon of vinegar.

I use homemade "buttermilk" all the time in my recipes because well, buttermilk is expensive and I'd rather not have to keep it on hand. I've never had a problem using it. I use plain white vinegar, though I've heard white wine vinegar works just as well.

lemon juice works in place of vinegar

I live in colombia as well and have come across this problem. If you have lemons available I use one tablespoon to one cup milk. But where I live in Colombia there are only limes. When I tried to use them the taste was awful. What I do here is 1/2 whole milk and 1/2 sour cream.

But when I really really want something tobe abso perfecto... I make butter and use the buttermilk from that. It's much easier than you think and then you have some really nice butter too. There's tons of make at home butter tutorials, in fact It hink I might have seen one just today on here.

aaah i so wish this post came up a week ago! when the (generally very well stocked and lovely) whole foods was out of buttermilk, i nearly flipped out and had to delay making my BF's bday cake until this coming weekend, and his birthday was last week and basically woah, did you say i could have avoided that disappointed look on his face and made his favorite cake without store-purchased buttermilk? sigh. definitely making a notation on the recipe card here, folks. ty ty ty!

I'm an avid baker and I never buy buttermilk when recipes call for it. Instead, I use plain yogurt which I always have in the fridge. If the recipe calls for 1 cup buttermilk, I fill my measuring cup almost all the way with the yogurt and add just a splash of milk to top it off.

But when I was living in Germany, the yogurt was thin enough that I didn't even add milk.

Funny you post this today, as I am making a cake today, and substituting slightly thinned yogurt for buttermilk. I never have buttermilk in the house, and I find yogurt works well in place of it.

Does no one use the Saco buttermilk powder?

It's made from real buttermilk, keeps forever in the fridge, and has worked fine in my experience (for use in pancakes and such, I tend to use the powder lowfat milk instead of water).

I've used plain yogurt to replace it, but also making buttermilk is really easy! 1 tablespoon vinegar (I use cider or rice vinegar or lemon juice - depending on the recipe) to 1 cup milk. Let it sit until it turns and voila!

I live in Colombia too and I bake a lot, what I used is Yogurt name Tapioca plain natural with not flavor at all and not sugar on it. It works perfect with all the recepies that call for buttermilk. SilviaLucia

these posts just made me smile so much...I love that there are so many people from Colombia and around the world that connect to this site and share their love for food.

I am currently living in Brazil and it has been a bit of a shock to my cooking style to change lists of ingredients. Baking has all but disappeared from my world.

Thanks for sharing everyone!

I'm off to pick up some vinegar now. "Buttermilk" pancakes here I come. =)

Powdered buttermilk fan, here, too. I love that it keeps forever in the fridge and there's no waste. It's shelf-stable until opened, so I bet you could mail order a can.

I had that powdered buttermilk and it clumped up terribly--more of a hassle than the lemon-juice-and-milk trick.

The recipes are calling for buttermilk for the tangy flavor, but also because it's more acidic than regular milk--this helps activate whatever leavening you're using. So keep this in mind when you're doing substitutions. I'd think that homemade buttermilk (the real stuff, left over from butter-making, that pitchinwoo describes) wouldn't be acidic enough until you left it out to sour a little?

yogurt, baby! it works.

i've actually used no-fat greek yogurt in place of buttermilk to make martha stewart's one bowl chocolate cupcakes--no thinning with milk, just straight-up fairly thick yogurt--and i think the resulting cake tastes WAY better than with buttermilk! so moist and perfect. that's my suggestion to anybody looking for a substitution! although i will add that i "make my own" buttermilk with the white vinegar milk recipe all the time, too =)

I was actually thinking about this topic today too. I knew about the vinegar/lemon milk substitute and it works great for baked goods but I'm making buttermilk fried chicken tonight - will the dredging be okay with the same substitute?

I mix one part yogurt to two parts regular milk to sub for buttermilk, personally.

I think I might try straight up yogurt next time, though, with all these comments.

I've used straight up yogurt before, as the other members have mentioned, but I find that yogurt yields a more dense, more moist baked good. It's still delicious! But it is a different texture than what the recipe author intended.

So I'd just mix 1 part yogurt to 2 parts milk, as deliriumsama suggests.

I've used all of these with great results:

1 cup buttermilk is equal to:
- 1 cup almond milk curdled with 1 tbsp lemon juice (to curdle: stir quickly for 30 seconds, let sit for 10 minutes)
- 1 cup almond milk curdled with 1 tbsp white vinegar (to curdle: stir quickly for 30 seconds, let sit for 10 minutes)
- 1 cup soy milk curdled with 1 tbsp white vinegar (to curdle: stir quickly for 30 seconds, let sit for 10 minutes)
- 1 cup soy milk curdled with 1 tbsp lemon juice (to curdle: stir quickly for 30 seconds, let sit for 10 minutes)

Good luck!
http://www.abbeycatchat.com

This yields the most fantastic crumb. Slightly different from buttermilk but it was amazingly moist.
To substitute 200ml buttermilk use
120ml greek yoghurt with 80ml low fat milk.