Buttermilk for Water Substitution in Yeast Bread Thread

[BakerAunt]

Buttermilk for Water Substitution

I am thinking of baking the Clonmel Kitchen Double Crusty Bread (in Paddy's recipes) and substituting in some buttermilk--1 cup for 1 cup of the water (recipe calls for 2 cups water). If I do that, should I delete the tsp. of vinegar? I will also substitute in 2 C of whole wheat flour. Advice? Suggestions?

I have a lot of buttermilk to use up in the next week.
posted by: bakeraunt on May 22, 2015 at 8:27 pm in General discussions

reply by: Mike Nolan on May 22, 2015 at 9:21 pm
You might need a bit more water than that, both because buttermilk has lots of milk solids in it and because whole wheat flour tends to absorb more moisture than AP flour. But I'd say give it a try, and let us know how it works. And you might be able to leave out the vinegar, the buttermilk has plenty of acid.

reply by: bakeraunt on May 23, 2015 at 10:50 am
Thanks for the advice Mike. The bread is on hold for a couple of days. I baked buns yesterday because I thought that we were having a guest for lunch, but he could not make it. So, we will have eleven buns to eat up first in sloppy josephines (use ground turkey rather than beef). It would have been 12, but the dog snagged a freshly baked one. 🙁

reply by: Mike Nolan on May 23, 2015 at 12:25 pm
I have tried putting a little whole wheat flour in the Clonmel Double Crusty recipe (a half cup, as I recall), we prefer it with all AP flour. Buttermilk could be interesting, though.

Cats look at bread with a 'What would I want THAT for?!" look on their faces. (My 'desk cat' does like Cheetos and Frosted Flakes, though.) We did have one cat when I was young who was very fond of Angel food cake; she would even eat through the plastic around the outside of a store-bought one to get to it.

reply by: bakeraunt on May 25, 2015 at 11:45 am
OK, this is the day! I am making Paddy's Clonmel Kitchen Double Crusty Bread with these changes:
I used 1 cup of buttermilk in place of 1 cup of water. I heated it to 159F (microwave here at vacation place is not that strong), then cooled down to 90F. I proofed the yeast with a bit of the sugar, then I added the rest of the sugar, the buttermilk, the oil, and the egg. I deleted the vinegar because of the buttermilk's acidity. I mixed in 3 cups of flour (2 C whole wheat and 1 C AP), then another cup of AP. I let it rest for 15 minutes to give the whole wheat some time to absorb the water. I then added another Tbs. of water, then a cup of flour with the salt mixed in. I decided it needed another Tbs. of water, which I added, then the last cup of flour. (Thanks, Mike for the suggestion that I would likely need a little more water.) Once I had it all mixed (I'm working by hand--no stand mixer here), I kneaded for 10 minutes and got it to windowpane. It is now on its first rise.
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I will report back later.

reply by: Mike Nolan on May 25, 2015 at 12:19 pm
Heating the buttermilk probably won't make any difference, if there were protease enzymes in your buttermilk, they're probably deactivated already by the culturing process. (If you make your own buttermilk, that's a different matter.)

I'm quite interested in how it comes out.

reply by: bakeraunt on May 25, 2015 at 1:10 pm
Ah, so next time I will not bother heating the buttermilk, except to warm it after removing from the refrigerator.

The first rise was about 40 minutes, as was the second rise. I have shaped them and put them in 9x5 inch pans. The pan rise is under way. I love the feel of this dough. It is soft but easy to work.

reply by: bakeraunt on May 25, 2015 at 2:02 pm
The pan rise was 40 minutes. The loaves are 20 minutes into the 40 minute bake. The aroma is wonderful. I just peeked into the oven (oven here has no window in the door), and the oven spring is very good.

reply by: bakeraunt on May 25, 2015 at 3:16 pm
The loaves are cooling on a rack--out of reach of the bread hound. The temperature when removed from the oven was 202F, and the color is a lovely golden brown. They should be cool enough this evening to sample with our soup. I think the recipe is a little small for 9x5 inch pans but would likely be too large for 8x4 inch pans.

reply by: Mike Nolan on May 25, 2015 at 3:31 pm
I think that's true of the original recipe, though most of the time I make it free-form (more like a Vienna bread) than in a loaf pan. I find a recipe that uses 16-17 ounces of flour is needed to fill a 9x5 loaf pan (which IMHO is why they are often called one-pound loaf pans.)

reply by: bakeraunt on May 25, 2015 at 9:49 pm
The bread is very soft with a chewy crust. I really like the buttermilk flavor with the whole wheat. I will definitely bake the recipe this way again.
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My experiment very much grows out of the group experience on this site. First, Paddy posted her recipe. Then other people raved about it, so I had to try it. Then someone last week asked about making soft whole wheat bread, and Baker Irene mentioned replacing half the water with buttermilk. I have a lot of buttermilk on hand, so I posted about what I planned to do, and Mike gave me great advice.

reply by: Mike Nolan on May 25, 2015 at 10:48 pm
Yum, sounds good. I need to make some bread, we're nearly out, maybe I'll try this.

reply by: Mike Nolan on May 29, 2015 at 12:54 am
Made it today with 1/2 buttermilk but no whole wheat flour. Tastes pretty good, a bit more tangy, most likely the buttermilk.

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• This topic was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by BakerAunt.
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