Hello all,
I am looking for some suggestions on what can be done with accumulated starter discard. I've made pancakes, waffles, and banana bread with a single feeding discard of ~200 grams (I keep my starter at room temperature and feed it twice daily at a ratio of 1:5:5). However, I may go for several days without baking and end up with ~400g of discard on each of these days. This week, I started accumulating the discard into a larger container and am keeping it in the fridge. I read somewhere on another thread that someone used the discard and just added baking soda for pancakes. Can this be done with 4 days worth of discard or would it be too sour? Usually when I make waffle/pancake batter I use the discard from an evening feeding, then add flour, buttermilk, and sugar, and let sit overnight. It gets baked the following morning with the addition of egg, baking soda, and a little butter.
Any ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Cheers,
Farrah
amount you ate maintaining by a factor of 4 if you are ending up with so much discard. Just keep less and build a levain from a smaller amount for each bake.
I love SD pasta English Muffins, pancakes, cakes, cookies etc. You can make anything SD it seems but it is best to just not have so much stater to begin with.
I use King Arthur Flour's English muffin recipe, which uses a cup of starter (fed or unfed). I think you can probably use a good bunch of it in just about any baked good to replace equal amounts of flour and water (assuming your starter is 100% hydration). As long as it doesn't smell bad.
I usually make just enough fresh starter for a batch of bread, but I still have ended up with a good sized bucket of 'spent' starter that I'm loath to throw in the compost. I hate wasting stuff!
if by 'starter' you mean the output from a build which goes into your final ingredients mix, just keep it in the refrigerator and use on your next bake. That is what I do on almost all of my bakes. Keep a ready and robust stiff levain in the refrigerator in a ready-to-go form. It can sit like that for a week or three with little degredation and I refresh it as I see fit, like when it starts to get used up.
Thanks for the suggestions!
I am starting out with 20g and adding 100g of water and 100g flour (25Rye+75AP). So perhaps I can scale this down to 10g + 50 and 50 instead? Scaling down even less to 5g seems like such a small amount, but I realize that there are billions of organisms in just a teaspoon of starter.
I love the pasta idea! Do you have a recipe that you use for this?
with and without egg. I just do it by feel. Everyone has their favorite recipe but the one without egg will use up more starter. A basic recipe is about 50% hydration for pasta so you can figure eggs are 75% water. A usual is one egg per cup of flour. If your starter is 100% hydration you will have to figure out how much flour and water are in it and the use that as part of the 50% hydration pasta recipe with or without egg.
My personal favorite is soba noodles which is 80% buckwheat flour 20% AP at 50% hydration. I sift out the bran from buckwheat. To make 200 g of soba you divide 200 by 1.5 (100 for the flour and 50 for the water = 1.5 or 50% hydration) which gives you 133 g of flour and 200-133 = 67 g of water. So the 133 g of flour is 133/5 (4 parts buckwheat to 1 part white flour)= 27 g of white flour and 133-27 = 106 g of buckwheat. The water is 67 g total and to get 27 g of white flour you would have to use 54 g of starter at 100% hydration leaving you to add an additional 40 g of water to the mix to get it to 50% hydration.
If you are making 100% white flour noodles with an egg you have to weigh the egg and take 70% of it as water to figure out how much starter you add add per cup of flour. A normal large egg can weigh from 46-52 g with 70% being water. too make 300 g of white noodles at 50% hydration you would have 200 g of flour and 100 g of water. 200 g of flour would be 1.6 Cups so you need 1.6 eggs. If your 1.6 eggs weigh 80 g then 56 g of them is water so you need another 34 g of water to get the mix to 100 g of water total or 50% hydration. To get 34 more g of water you need 68 g of 100% hydration starter which also contains 34 g of flour. So the recipe is
68 g of starter, 80 g of eggs, 166 g of white flour or semolina.
Hope this helps
I sometimes use Claus Meyer's recipe:
Start with about 2dl of starter.
Adjust the consistency of the excess starter with flour or water depending on the hydration. It should resemble a thick pancake dough.
Add a little salt.
Spread the dough thinly out on a baking sheet.
Bake for 20-30 minutes at 140C/285F until the flakes are crispy.
Break up and eat with a relish or chutney, or sprinkle on a salad.
Bessides wasting a lot of flour -- which you've clearly discovered -- but but storing at room temperature you're also letting the resident microorganisms (yeast and lactobacilli) run amok to no good purpose, other than metabolizing a lot of flour that you have to pay for.
Rather than becoming a slave to your sponge, which it sounds like, try feeding a couple of times a week, storing in a sealed container in the fridge, then refreshing the 12-24 hours before you plan to bake. Fridge temperatures will slow the yeast and LAB activity to a near standstill, preserving a considerably portion of their vitality. Your cultures will be happy, you'll be less hassled and your breads will turn out just fine.
Also, I agree with dabrownman about cutting the quantity. There's no good reason to keep more on hand than you need.
Stan Ginsberg
theryebaker.com
Well, I personally agree with the others that storing in the fridge is probably a more reasonable answer, as then you aren't spending so much on excess flour, but sometimes you end up with discard anyway. So, if you're looking for ideas, here's what I did with a bit of excess starter one time, King Arthur's Skillet Flatbreads! I used aprox 6oz unfed 100% hydration all rye starter in place of the respective amounts water and flour, and have flavored it with dill/onion/garlic and on separate occasions paprika and garlic, both with a quite tasty success. Blog on it and link to recipe at http://www.kingarthurflour.com/blog/2012/09/24/skillet-flatbreads/
Also, a blog on your exact question is at: http://www.kingarthurflour.com/blog/2014/07/27/excess-sourdough-5-tasty-ways-to-use-it-up/ (PS: the crackers at the end of the blog are pretty good!)
I realize and agree that in the long run the fridge would be a better home for my starter. I am still pretty new to SD baking and have been enjoying every opportunity to bake, which has been about 4 days a week. I guess I opted for the RT route for the flexibility it gave me to bake at the drop of a hat, rather than having to plan 24 hours in advance.
That said, when I am unable to bake for several days, I just get too much accumulated starter. So, it sounds like, by a resounding majority, that the fridge is my best option. I will give it a try and see how it goes. :)
Thank you dabrownman for the pasta recipe. We eat a lot of pasta and I am anxious to give this a try. I also love the flat bread idea!... the flavor possibilities are endless.
Cheers everyone!
Farrah
That cake looks amazing! That is a must try! Thanks for sharing :)