BREAD ME! Easy and fast recipes using sourdough starter to eat today.

July 28, 2014 8:48 AM

I have about 1/4+ cup of sourdough starter to use up. Tell me what I can make that I can eat today.

I would prefer not to throw the starter out. Is there anything I can make with just the ingredients I have on hand with 1/4 cup of starter or less? Large or small bread items, pancakes, savory or sweet--anything edible goes. The less work, the better. But the most important factor is time--I'd like to eat the thing today.

I have the basics (other common ingredients are OK; I don't need to use up the below):

2 lbs white flour
salt/sugar/etc.
oil
water/milk
oats

Please use cups and Tb/tsp--no digital scale on hand right now. Thank you!

posted by RaRa-SpaceRobot to Food & Drink (8 answers total)

Assuming it's actual sourdough starter, that is, that it is soured, you can use it as the acid in any quick bread or pancake.
posted by OmieWise at 8:55 AM on July 28, 2014

Response by poster: Thanks, OmieWise. I should have specified: the starter is soured and ready, and I am a very novice cook. I genuinely don't know what "use it as the acid" means--sorry! Could you and others be more recipe specific?
posted by RaRa-SpaceRobot at 9:09 AM on July 28, 2014

I've found the sourdough recipes on the King Arthur Flour website to be a pretty good starting point for novices. The Rustic Sourdough Bread recipe in their bread section is my usual employment for my starter

(though I usually maintain a 1.5 cup starter and use about .75 - 1 cup with every recipe ... I'm not sure how much mileage you'll get out of .25 cups)
posted by bl1nk at 9:17 AM on July 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

I was just coming here to recommend the King Arthur recipes too; the current post on their blog is Excess Sourdough: Five Tasty Ways To Use It Up.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 9:22 AM on July 28, 2014

Apologies if this is obvious, but if you want to use a recipe that uses more than 1/4 cup of starter, you can feed it with equal parts of water (around 80 degrees F) and flour. In your case I would probably add 1/8 cup each of flour & water, mix it up a bit, let it sit for an hour or so at room temp, and then you should be able to make a 1 lb loaf of sourdough bread.

One thing it would be helpful for us to know before providing recipe advice is what consistency the starter is, because there are "wet" ones (more like pancake batter) and "dry" ones (more like a real dough).
posted by karbonokapi at 9:33 AM on July 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thanks, karbonokapi. That's helpful and not obvious, and will make the recommended King Arthur site very usable. I'll go feed it right now. (The starter is a "wet" one.)
posted by RaRa-SpaceRobot at 9:39 AM on July 28, 2014

Best answer: I think you should just make sourdough-raised pancakes. They'll be delicious and they are easy and you can have them in a few hours.

Just take your 1/4 of starter, add a cup of flour, a few tbls of melted butter or oil, a pinch of salt, an egg if you want, and add enough milk to get a batter consistency and then let it ferment for a few hours. Probably start with 3/4 cup of milk - assuming it'll take a cup or so.
posted by JPD at 9:50 AM on July 28, 2014

I asked a similar question a few years ago, and there were many cool answers!
posted by Adridne at 11:16 AM on July 28, 2014