How to Make Sour Milk

Ever gone through your grandparents’ recipe boxes or books and be stumped with ingredients?  For me, this happens way too often.  Recipes calling for sour milk fit into that category.  It is likely that recipes that use sour milk today were originally conceived in order to help use up ingredients that may not have otherwise been usable.  Drinking sour milk?  No thank you!  Milk is very different today than it was when many of these recipes were written.  Pasteurization changes the way that milk ages.  If raw milk is available to you, allowing it to go sour will create a whole new ingredient to use in cooking.  Buttermilk is also a safe alternative.  You can still opt to use naturally sour pasteurized milk in baking today, but once your milk starts to separate, it is too late.

Many of us do not have old milk sitting around for those random times we want to use it.  Thankfully, it is easy to make.  Sour milk has a higher acidity than fresh milk.  It changes the way the ingredients interact to provide the correct rise.

Sour milk only takes about 5 minutes to make.  For 1 cup of milk, put 1 T vinegar or lemon juice in the bottom of the measuring cup.  Fill the cup up to the 1 cup line with milk.  Wait for about 5 minutes.

Usually when I do this the milk looks as though it has started to separate a little.  I hope this helps in your baking adventures!