The Secret History of Food Words

Welcome to Milk Street.

Who's calling?

Hi, Chris.

It's Marcy calling in Montreal.

And how can we help you?

I'm a professional baker and I, I write cookbooks.

But I've noticed over the years when you bake with buttermilk in some other books I've seen, they always say add the baking soda to the buttermilk first before you add it to the recipe.

And I always sort of see that as watching the leavening disappear before my eyes-

Right

... before it even gets added to the recipe.

I'm wondering about your take on that or why recipes would mention that technique.

This is gonna be a short call.

Uh, I agree.

I make buttermilk biscuits all the time, and you always add the baking powder or baking soda directly to the flour with any sugar or salt.

Mm-hmm.

And then the buttermilk is added after you cut the fat into the flour.

So there's absolutely no need to add baking soda to buttermilk.

Some older recipes sometimes had the leavener put into warm or hot water.

I've wondered about that.

My conclusion is that they did that to see if the leavener was active.

That's exactly what I was thinking.

Um, to make sure that it's-

It's-

... actually still good.

Oh, that's interesting.