Cookaholics Bulletin Board

I've also read you can freeze buttermilk. Does anyone have any experience with this? I froze some a couple of weeks ago, but haven't defrosted it yet, so not sure how it will turn out.

I have frozen buttermilk many times. What turns me off it is that it gets weird when thawed; it separates and goes watery. I'm told it's find to use but its appearance puts me off.

When I buy buttermilk here, it is quite thin. The stuff I've made from culture is much thicker. They behave fairly differently in -- for example -- a pancake recipe. I'm not sure what store-bought buttermilk in the US is typically like.

Paul, you're in France? Amirite? Buttermilk in Europe might actually be buttermilk, i.e. the liquid left over from making butter. If it isn't cultured, it won't be sour enough to raise a pancake or tenderize a biscuit. Here, buttermilk used to be leftover butter-making liquid, cultured either before making the butter or after, if the butter-maker was making sweet-cream butter. It eventually just became cultured low-fat milk, and now you can get "gourmet" buttermilk which is made with whole milk.

Paul's in Canada like me. I believe our buttermilk is cultured, not leftover from butter making.

I noticed on the weekend when I made Darcie's pancake recipe with actual store bought buttermilk versus my normal milk + buttermilk powder that the mix was thicker than normal. Inspired me to buy it more often but at 2.99/litre I tend to just go the sour milk or powder route since it seems like I toss some every time. I need to make more things with buttermilk obviously.

The last couple of times I bought buttermilk I bought this brand/type: http://www.darigold.com/products/milk/3pt5percent-bulgarian-buttermilk
I believe it's a WA state company, I know it's available all over the PNW.
I liked this one better; it lasted w-a-y past the pull-date and still seemed to be just like it was fresh.