Now that my sourdough starter is successful....

September 28, 2022 11:06 AM

I need your recipes/ideas for discard.

Thanks to you all, and especially slkinsey (because we did make that purchase and then stored it in the fridge a bit while life got busy before we re-started it), we have successful, gorgeous, sourdough starter. Yay!
I know I can Google recipes, but I'd love your wise advice again for favorite discard recipes. Thanks!

posted by atomicstone to Food & Drink (29 answers total)

King Arthur's sourdough crumpets recipe is always our standard.
posted by dr. boludo at 11:12 AM on September 28, 2022 [4 favorites]

I have made this Sourdough Crackers recipe from King Arthur Baking but instead of herbs I used everything bagel seasoning from Trader Joes and thought they turned out really tasty.
posted by blacktshirtandjeans at 11:29 AM on September 28, 2022 [10 favorites]

This King Arthur sourdough discard biscuits recipe is what I do probably 95% of the time I use my starter. (I frequently make them smaller -- we tend to not use them for sandwiches, but just more like a traditional biscuit.)
posted by BlahLaLa at 11:40 AM on September 28, 2022 [2 favorites]

Yes, KA'S sourdough crackers are excellent. If you don't feel like doing more baking though, you can just use discard in any bread recipe - it's half flour, half water, so just weight it, and subtract accordingly from the bread recipe you want to make.

Oh, but ideally once you starter is started, you will never have the issue of discard again. Just feed as much as you need for the recipe.
posted by coffeecat at 12:08 PM on September 28, 2022 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Can I ask (my husband is actually in charge of the starter and may understand already), sometimes the KA recipes say fed or discard. Can you describe what that means? Discard is when you open it? Fed is immediately after adding the new flour?
posted by atomicstone at 12:12 PM on September 28, 2022

My family strongly believes that the sourdough pancakes and waffles are the MAIN reason to have sourdough starter on hand, not just a way to use the discard, so here is my aunt's recipe. She started giving starter and this recipe to friends and family back in the 60's, and everyone in the family has a typed copy, and just the sight of it can overwhelm me with love and gratitude. This was created from OCR of a pdf, so has some weirdness, but I think it's readable. Let me know if you have any questions!
posted by amarynth at 12:23 PM on September 28, 2022 [7 favorites]

Fed starter is starter that's all bubbly and ready to be a rising agent. Discard doesn't need to be bubbly, so if you haven't fed it in several days or weeks, it will still work in recipes that call for discard.
posted by tangosnail at 12:30 PM on September 28, 2022 [1 favorite]

King Arthur's sourdough pizza crust is also very nice. Bonus: you don't have to make every pizza a pizza in the traditional sense. I like to chuck random veg from the refrigerator on, maybe with a nice olive oil base and maaaaybe a sprinkle of cheese. Turns out nicely.
posted by daikaisho at 12:47 PM on September 28, 2022 [1 favorite]

Here's King Arthur's sourdough pancake recipe.

It works very well but makes far too many pancakes for me, as I live solo. Fortunately they freeze very well and so I'll often make the overnight sponge on Saturday night, have fresh pancakes on Sunday morning, and freeze the rest (also I recommend putting a bit of freezer paper in between the pancakes before they freeze in order to make them easier to separate when you retrieve them.)

Then for the next week or two, if I feel like a low-effort breakfast I can grab a couple of pancakes, put them in a shallow foil-covered baking dish and throw them in a 350 degree oven for a little while to warm up as I shower and prep whatever else I am having to start my day.
posted by Nerd of the North at 1:29 PM on September 28, 2022 [3 favorites]

BTW, as long as people are sharing sourdough recipes.. Back in the 70s, when I was a child, there was a short-lived fad for sourdough that passed through the Great Lakes area where I lived, and we briefly went through a sourdough phase based on photocopied or mimeographed sheets that got passed around with a bit of the starter.

I'd like to find the recipe for a coffee cake that was part of the lore that circulated with this fad.

For some reason the sourdough starter had been given a name and that name was "Herman". If anybody knows what I'm talking about and has the associated sourdough coffee cake recipe I'd be eager to try it again to re-attempt one of the lost tastes of my childhood.

On the other hand if nobody has any idea what I'm talking about, I'd also settle for any good sourdough coffee cake recipe, preferably one that does not depend on fruity fillings.
posted by Nerd of the North at 1:34 PM on September 28, 2022 [5 favorites]

Discard is when you open it? Fed is immediately after adding the new flour?

Discard is when you are building up a starter from scratch, the process involves "discarding" half of what's there and then feeding it more, until the starter is strong enough- a process that can take weeks. But it sounds like that's not where you are right now - that you now have an active starter. Congrats, you never need to have discard again!

This is how I do it:

My go-to recipe requires I have 227g fed starter. That means when I take the starter out of the fridge, I add 113g of water and 113g of flour to it. If it doubles in 4hrs, that's a perfectly fed starter. I then remove 227g from the starter, and use that for the recipe. I put the rest of the starter back in the fridge - no discard! Of course, if you want to also bake a discard recipe you can, but then you'd need to feed your starter more grams of flour/water.
posted by coffeecat at 1:35 PM on September 28, 2022 [2 favorites]

Oh and I'll just add - https://www.reddit.com/r/Sourdough/ is full of very knowledgeable sourdough bakers, should you ever get stuck or are looking for inspiration/ideas. Very friendly sub.
posted by coffeecat at 1:38 PM on September 28, 2022 [2 favorites]

Herman Coffee Cake and Herman (or 'Friendship') Starter (oventales)
posted by snuffleupagus at 1:46 PM on September 28, 2022 [5 favorites]

And here's a family cookbook version, which may be closer to the original: starter and cake.
posted by snuffleupagus at 1:53 PM on September 28, 2022 [2 favorites]

One good way to deal with the issue of discard is to maintain a much smaller amount of starter. All it's there to do is keep the culture going. So, for example, you could keep it in a baby food jar and when you feed it scrape out everything except around 10 grams, then feed with 25 grams each of flour and water. That's going to result in only around a few tablespoons of discard from every feeding. When you need more starter for a recipe, just use the discard to inoculate a larger amount of flour and water and wait for it to become active.
posted by slkinsey at 2:26 PM on September 28, 2022 [6 favorites]

Before I killed my starter, I used discard to make fritters. Grated veg. like sweet potato, squash, cauliflower, sweet corn, or potatoes, with grated onion, maybe some herbs/spices, salt, enough starter discard to hold together, fried in @ 1/3" of hot oil, and drained on newspaper.
posted by theora55 at 2:57 PM on September 28, 2022 [2 favorites]

Sorry, I thought I had set up the link to my family sourdough pancake recipe above so anyone could view it, but I guess it was still restricted. It should be open to all now. link
posted by amarynth at 3:01 PM on September 28, 2022 [1 favorite]

Naan!
posted by ikahime at 3:39 PM on September 28, 2022 [1 favorite]

Literally making a triple batch of these King Arthur scallion pancakes!!!
posted by larthegreat at 3:49 PM on September 28, 2022 [2 favorites]

I've had great success with The Perfect Loaf's sourdough recipes. Here's a link to his sourdough discard recipes. Happy baking!
posted by Stephanie Duy at 5:33 PM on September 28, 2022 [1 favorite]

Flour tortillas used to be a staple ingredient that was always in my fridge but they got ridiculously expensive in my local grocery store (I just can't bring myself to pay $0.50 or more per tortilla!) and so I am less likely to have them lying around unless I hit a sale.

In between sales, I do pretty well with this sourdough tortilla recipe.
posted by Nerd of the North at 6:16 PM on September 28, 2022 [2 favorites]

Came here to say the scallion pancakes. larthegreat beat me to it. That recipe slaps!
posted by capricorn at 6:19 PM on September 28, 2022 [1 favorite]

Actually wait no—my scallion pancakes were Tim Chin’s for Serious Eats. Fuck it, try both!
posted by capricorn at 6:21 PM on September 28, 2022 [1 favorite]

Discard is not the result of the starter creation process (although that process does involve throwing some stuff out). Discard is what is left over after you feed your starter. So for example let’s say you bake once a week. You still need to feed your starter once a day or once every other day. But you can’t keep adding flour and water to your container continuously without removing any, or you will end up with an infinite amount of starter. So you take your one cup, you remove half, this is the ‘discard’. Then you add the food for your starter. Then you put your container back on top of the fridge and do the same thing tomorrow. This process means you end up with 1/2 cup of starter ‘discard’ every day that you have to figure out what to do with. If you bake every day, it’s not a problem because this is fully fed healthy starter that you can use in your recipe. If you don’t, you can toss it or make delicious pancakes.

Personally I was baking about once a week and I managed to avoid the discard problem entirely by keeping my starter mostly in the fridge. I’d use it, put the scrapings plus a couple tablespoons plus some ‘food’ back in the jar, and stick it back in the fridge. Next week, the day before baking, I pull the jar out, add a little food and put it on top of the fridge to sit at room temp overnight. In the morning; voila, full fed active starter. Repeat.
posted by bq at 8:46 PM on September 28, 2022 [1 favorite]

I keep my rye starter in the fridge, mostly dormant, take it out and feed it overnight before I need it, use what I need in the morning, then put it back. I rarely have any excess to discard. I think this approach works with a rye starter but I've got the impression it doesn't work with a wheat one. I've had the starter for about 10 years now and use it (and feed it) once or twice a week.

If I do end up with too much starter it can be used as a cheat/booster for making injera with teff flour more quickly and reliably.

330g teff flour
120g plain flour
227g rye starter (1:2 rye:water)
680g water

Leave until it froths up

Then fry pancakes.

It's not authentic but it looks and tastes good.
posted by BinaryApe at 1:35 AM on September 29, 2022 [1 favorite]

Once you’ve established a strong culture in your starter there are two things you could (should) be doing to minimize waste (discard). First, as others have mentioned, feeding small is just as effective at keeping the starter healthy and if you don’t need any of the resultant levain - that is it’s just a maintenance feed - 40-50 grams of total starter is completely sufficient. The amount of carry over you include will, along with the ambient room temperature, determine how long your starter takes to peak. If you aren’t in any rush even a basically infinitesimal amount of carry over will still cause a newly mixed batch of starter to rise/peak, but you’ll have to wait quite a while. In general at say 74 degrees a 1:10:10 feeding will take around 12 hours to peak. So if you wanted about 40g of starter you could take 3-4g of carry over and add to it 19-20g each new flour and water.
The other thing you can do to reduce discard is feed less frequently and refrigerate your starter. Some folks will say this is bad but they’re not to be believed. I kept my starter on a counter for its first year or so but ultimately came to embrace the time altering properties of the fridge. If you feed your starter and let it get going for say one to three hours, you can stretch the rest of that growth from what would be another ten or so hours into a matter of days by tossing it into the fridge which slows microbial growth significantly. Especially if you’re only baking once a week I recommend this. Check out Rose Hill Sourdough on instagram and they have a pinned post about this that makes a very compelling case.

Now to your actual question - crackers are great and the longer your discard has been sitting in the fridge the more pronounced the sour/umami flavor gets. My preferred method is to take discard and add melted butter, some salt and maybe a little water (1/10th or so the weight of the discard depending on how old and loose it is) plus any other seeds or seasonings you might want. Whisk until they’re a thick batter consistency and pour into a parchment lined sheet tray. Bake at 350 until we’ll browned, you want the bottoms and I be nice and shiny, rotating every ten mins. At the first ten minute mark I score them with a pizza or ravioli cutter. They’re delicious and I’ve had people tell me to forsake bread baking and just focus on crackers they’re that addicting.

I also love a savory discard pancake. Somewhere between half and a cup of discard, an egg, and some salt form the base. Then go crazy with the inclusions. I like something between a Korean kimchi pancake (with cheese!) and okonomiyaki with cabbage and bean sprouts and whatever else I have in the fridge.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 1:42 AM on September 29, 2022 [1 favorite]

If you don't mind investing in some pretzel salt (sea salt doesn't have the right sort of crunch) I can recommend the flavor of the King Arthur Baking sourdough pretzels recipe. Note that the KA recipe doesn't have you boil the pretzels before baking. If you want the dark color of a German pretzel and a crisper crust, use Harold McGee's trick and bake some baking soda, which causes a chemical reaction that turns sodium bicarbonate (AKA baking soda) into sodium carbonate (AKA washing soda). You can then dissolve the sodium carbonate in water (it actually dissolves more readily than baking soda) and briefly dip or boil the uncooked pretzels before baking. That recipe uses a pretty concentrated solution and requires a rinsing step after the dipping step; when I did this I used a more dilute washing soda solution and didn't feel like the rinsing step was necessary. It's been a while so I'm not sure whose recipe I used, though.

The KA recipe for sourdough waffles is also excellent.

BTW I learned to use a clean jar for every refresh instead of just adding flour and water to the same jar, but it seems the Baking Internet is divided on whether this is necessary. I do more or less what's in this KA post about maintaining a smaller starter although I settled on 5g culture and 10g each water and flour.

My baking schedule: Friday morning I take the starter out of the fridge, put 40g water in a clean, wide mouth, pint size Mason jar, scoop the entire starter from the fridge into the water, stir it around, then add 40g all purpose flour and stir until completely mixed. I then put a lid on the jar and leave it slightly unscrewed, and let the jar sit at room temperature for about twelve hours.

Friday night I put 10g water in a clean quarter-pint Mason jar, scoop out 5g culture from the scaled-and-fed starter, and stir that into the water in the new jar. I then add 10g flour, stir again, and put a fresh lid on the new, smaller, jar, again leaving it slightly unscrewed. I then take the remaining ~100g of starter culture and do the next build for my bread (I actually build it into a preferment at 55% hydration at this point for other reasons, but I could use the scaled up starter in any number of ways).

Saturday morning I tighten the lid on the little jar and pop it in the fridge for a week. Then I take the preferment and incorporate it into the full dough recipe, which gets three rounds of coil folds and bulk fermentation at room temp, before overnight retardation (in bulk).

Sunday the bulk dough comes out of the fridge and rests at room temp for about an hour before preshaping, a rest, shaping, and proofing. I'm usually baking around noon on Sunday.

If you're paying attention you may notice I don't have any discard. As the KA post points out, if you're keeping a small starter you can scale up to exactly what you need, when you need it, and just keep enough culture to prep for the next batch. I have two safety nets: I fed double one week and dried out some culture as a backup, and I still have a discard jar that I occasionally add to when I have had to skip a week or two and do some extra feeding to revive the culture before baking. (I actually have a third safety net in some starter I shared with somebody else, which I guess counts as offsite storage). I don't think I'd recommend completely moving to a no-discard schedule until you're really secure in what you're doing. I kind of came to it by accident and then realized how convenient it was for me.
posted by fedward at 9:29 AM on September 29, 2022 [1 favorite]

I just want to say that it is also okay to compost the discarded starter. Of course you'd rather have pancakes, but some days, that's just not practical - you have my permission to throw it in the compost if that's what you need to do.
posted by epanalepsis at 9:40 AM on September 29, 2022 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: There's too many great ideas for discard (and limiting the existence of so much discard), but wow the KAF crackers are good. Note to self (and others), if you add a spice mix like everything but the bagel instead of fresh herbs, don't then keep following the recipe re sprinkling coarse sea salt. We had to toss that batch, it was so salty. But they were so easy to make and 3yr old twins LOVED mixing and then rolling out the dough. A definite keeper and a reason to make excess discard. Will work through these as they all sound so yum. Thanks for the curation!
posted by atomicstone at 11:11 AM on October 9, 2022