Dry milk in dried sausages

[Wunderdave]

Question for all you gurus

I see some recipes that call for dried milk powder in fermented dried sausages (example: http://lpoli.50webs.com/index_files/pepperoni.pdf calls for 1/2 cup of non fat milk at 75G, so it's not wet milk at ~4 oz).

I made this recipe as written and it dried beautifully. I've tried other dried sausages with non fat dry milk in them in the past, which failed (for any number of reasons obviously).

I thought the purpose of nonfat dry milk was to bind moisture in cooked sausages. Would it also then bind moisture in dry cured sausages? Am I missing something?

[DiggingDogFarm]

A lot of folks use it but I don't know why....unless special calcium reduced dry milk is used it can cause problems.
It's mentioned frequently in meat science books and even on Len Poli's site:
"Commercially the calcium reduced form of skim milk powder is used as calcium is said to interfere with protein solubility and emulsion formation."

Source: http://lpoli.50webs.com/Tips.htm


~Martin