Practical tips on how to adapt any baking recipe to use with discarded sourdough starter, including bread, rolls, crackers, biscuits, pancakes and other bakes.
If you are just getting started with baking your own sourdough bread, you might be wondering what to do with your discarded sourdough starter.
Nearly all sourdough bread recipes I’ve seen, just say ‘make sure you feed your sourdough starter regularly, by discarding half of your sourdough starter and replacing it with fresh flour and water’.
That’s all well and good, but most people would think that by ‘discarding’ the recipe means ‘throwing away’ the sourdough starter.
Sadly that’s what some people do, but since I don’t like to waste food, I like to use mine sourdough bread starter in another recipe as part of the flour. I really think it’s a shame to just threw away the discarded sourdough starter.
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How to use discarded sourdough starter in any baking recipe
My baking blog has a plenty of recipes with discarded sourdough starter, but rather than just giving you recipes to follow, let me show you how you can adjust any baking recipe so that you can use it with your sourdough starter.
Whilst you can find great recipes that are already adapted for the use with discarded sourdough starter, you might have some favourite recipes, that you might like to adapt once you start baking sourdough bread. This is great if you are baking sourdough bread as part of your balanced diet and you can also add the discarded sourdough starter to other recipes to make them more healthy.
Think about the recipe flavour
Whilst in theory you can use sourdough discard in any baking recipe I usually try to think about the flavour first. Would the sour flavour and the rye flour (or whatever flour you use for your sourdough starter) work with your choosen recipe?
I’m perfectly happy with sourdough starter in pancakes, brownies, breakfast muffins, pizza, bread and crackers, but I draw the line in baking victoria sponge cake with sourdough starter!
Adjust the existing recipe flour & liquid ratio
One thing you need to bear in mind is that with some baking recipes you don’t need to adjust the quantities (usually breads, pizza dough, pancakes etc.) but with some (such as cake, brownies, doughnuts recipes) you might need to take away a little flour and the liquid equivalent of whatever is in your original recipe.
If you are adding a very small amount, then it’s usually fine without any problems.
Feed your sourdough starter with equal amounts of flour and water
If you use your discarded sourdough starter regularly for cakes, it might be a good idea to start feeding your sourdough starter with equal amounts of flour and water.
That way you know that if you have 200g of discarded sourdough starter you have about 100 g of flour and 100g water.
Understand the difference between cake and bread flour
Another thing to bear in mind, is that your discarded sourdough starter is made with bread flour, which behaves slightly differently to a cake flours.
Bread or strong bread flour has more gluten, so it’s stronger and might make the cake slightly tougher if you add too much.
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How much discarded sourdough starter to add to any recipe
This very much depends on what flavour you want to achieve (the more sourdough starter you add the more you change the existing flavour of the original recipe), how much discarded starter you have and what extra volume of flour and water can the original recipe take.
Bread, Rolls, Pizza dough, Sweet enriched dough
- Add up to 100 grams of sourdough starter (for any 500 gram flour quantity in the recipe) without any change of the original recipe
- Add up to 200 – 300 grams of sourdough starter and reduce the original recipe flour amount by 100-150 grams and water/liquid by 100 – 150 grams
Cake, brownies, crispbreads
- To ensure that your original recipe will work with discarded sourdough starter, don’t replace more than 1/4 or max 1/3 of the original recipe flour and water/liquid for your discarded starter
Every Day Bread with Sourdough Starter
Use the discarded sourdough starter in your normal bread dough. If you are adding a small amount of your sourdough starter (say about 100-150g) just add it to your normal bread recipe and use as normal.
You don’t need to adjust the bread recipe ingredients, you are basically just adding about 50g of flour and 50ml of water (that’s if you are feeding your sourdough starter with equal portions of flour and water).
The sourdough starter might add a hint of flavour to your bread, but it’s not going to change the structure or flavour dramatically. Make sure you use yeast in your bread as the discarded sourdough starter is not active enough to raise the bread dough.
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Sourdough Pancakes
Using discarded sourdough starter in pancake recipes, is probably the easiest way to use up the excess starter.
Just adjust the measurements of your favourite pancake recipe or make a bigger batch! I would still keep some regular – plain or self-raising flour in the pancake mix as it’s lighter and has less gluten.
Over the years I’ve experimented with different ratios and worked out that you can easily take 50% flour and milk/liquid away and replace it with discarded sourdough starter.
Although the discarded sourdough starter is not active, when the pancake batter hits the hot frying pan, the natural yeast ‘awakes’ and it creates the most delicious and light pancakes!
My favourite flour to mix the discarded sourdough starter is spelt or buckwheat flour. It makes amazingly wholesome pancakes!
PANCAKE RECIPES THAT CAN BE ADAPTED WITH SOURDOUGH DISCARD
More recipe ideas with discarded sourdough starter
- Crispbreads and Crackers
- Flat Breads and Tortillas
- Pizza dough
- Brownies
- Healthy Pear & Muffin
- Sourdough & Blueberry Muffin Recipe
- Cheese & Rosemary Scones
- Regular bread recipes, using sourdough starter for flavour
I think that’s plenty of suggestions to keep you going! So, if you can, avoid just throwing your discarded sourdough starter away and make it into something extra special.
If you don’t have time to use up your sourdough starter you can also dry your starter and keep it for later.
Have you got your favourite recipe for using up your discarded sourdough starter? That’s fab! Please do share it with us in the comments below, I’d love to try some new recipes!
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Learn how to bake bread at home with my practical bread making e-book. Step by step techniques, photos and tips on how to bake artisan bread, sourdough and enriched dough treats. Read the customer’s review on Amazon and 
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