Category: sourdough

A guide to making sourdough pancakes…

Making pancakes with sourdough starter is simple, fast and oh so satisfying! It’s also a perfect way to use up discard if you are making a new starter, or using up some if you’ve found that you’ve started keeping too much starter.

Alternatively, feed your starter for the purpose. Build it up so that you have 100-200g of starter then mix it with milk of your choice, and an egg or egg replacement, and, if you feel the batter needs it, extra flour. Whisk it all up together.

*If you are feeding your starter solely for making pancakes, just feed it more than normal to create what you need. If you’re using discard it doesn’t need feeding or any additional attention, just use it as it is.

*As a guide, I whisk 150-200g starter with 1 egg and then enough milk to make the batter I want, depending on whether I’m making crepes or scotch/American pancakes. Thinner for crepes, thicker for the smaller thicker pancakes.

*You can use any type of starter and any type of flour to make your pancakes, I use whatever takes my fancy, hence the different colours of mine shown here.

*Make the batter as thin or thick as you usually would for pancakes.

*Let it sit until you’re ready to use it, or use immediately. If you’re going to let it sit, maybe for 1-2 hours, it will ferment a little and develop some more flavour, just cover the bowl until you’re ready to use it. It can sit at room temp. I usually use mine immediately.

*Heat a large pan over a medium heat and melt some butter in the pan. Spoon in a ladle full of batter and cook until ready, turning halfway once the base has browned.

*Eat the pancakes with your choice of sweet or savoury fillings.

I used 2 of my sourdough pancakes to make quesadillas, I filled 2 with a homemade chilli sauce and grated cheese and melted them together
Tasty sourdough quesadillas

Bee pollen sourdough…

I was very lucky recently to be sent some bee pollen by one of my very kind Instagram followers. I’ve had bee pollen before, but not like this, this one is a vibrant yellow with lovely fat granules. Sourdough loves bee pollen, it loves the natural wild yeast and sugars that it brings to the party.

For this loaf I played with a new starter adding bee pollen to it from the beginning, and you’ll see from the photos in the grid below that it went a bit wild! It was very exciting to wake up to. Once I’d stirred it down and fed it again the next morning, it was still active and bubbly and ready to use within an hour.

This is what I used to make this loaf, however, you do NOT need to make a new starter yourself. If you would like to see how much starters like bee pollen, feed up your starter, split some out into a new bowl and feed it for a couple of days with your usual flour and water and a good amount of bee pollen before giving it a go. Or if you fancy making a new starter with some, then go for it! I didn’t measure out the bee pollen, I used a dessert sized spoon amount each time I added some.

Top left: the bee pollen;
top right and bottom left: my happy starter after an overnight bee pollen feed; bottom right: an hour after a feed of flour and water that morning

To make my loaf, I used my master recipe, exactly as it is (link on the left of your screen) with this bee pollen boosted starter. You can also add the bee pollen to your dough instead.

For this loaf I used my 28cm long oval banneton and baked in my 30cm long oval pan from a cold start for 55 minutes. It’s all in my recipe 👍🏻

And this was inside the cut loaf. You can see the yellow tint from the bee pollen. Although bee pollen is sweet it does not make your loaf sweet using this small amount, but it does make the sourness more mild, and really produces a great texture, really fabulously chewy! It was a lovely loaf to eat.

If you do try it, I hope you like it!

My sourdough spelt banana bread…

Something for the weekend?

Introducing my sourdough banana spelt bread…

Inspired by seeing several people’s banana breads recently, including the lovely Kellie, I decided to make my menfolk a banana loaf. Of course, having some starter fed and active, I couldn’t resist making my own sourdough version with no refined sugar at the same time. And this is it!

I used spelt flours, feel free to substitute them for flours of your choice.

The starter adds flavour and texture but not lift in this recipe as it is an immediate recipe. I will try it as an overnight prove one day soon.

It’s great freshly baked but also good later and the next day once the flavours have developed.

As the photos show, I added chopped Brazil nuts, but next time I’d go with no nuts at all or maybe a few walnuts; the Brazil nuts made it a little dry so I don’t recommend it.

As is my choice, I used a small amount of honey in my loaf, I have included more in this written up recipe. If you would prefer something sweeter please feel free to double it or replace it with 100-150g of your choice of sugar.

Ingredients

100g white spelt flour (I use this one)

100g wholemeal spelt flour (I use this one)

100g bubbly active starter

50g runny honey

50g softened butter

1tsp bicarbonate of soda

1/2tsp baking powder

1 egg

3 medium ripe bananas, roughly mashed

An extra banana if you want one for decoration, sliced

Method

Preheat your oven to 160C/320F fan/convection, 180C/360F non fan/convention

Either grease or line a 2lb/900g, 23 x 13cm/9” x 5” loaf tin

Mix all of the ingredients together well, but not over mixed, spoon the mixture into the loaf tin.

Bake for 50-60 minutes or until a metal skewer comes out clean.

Eat!

My hazelnut cacao chocolate chip sourdough muffins..

Introducing my hazelnut cacao choc chip sourdough muffins!

I recently whizzed up some hazelnut cacao butter by blending roasted peeled chopped hazelnuts with cacao powder, a squeeze of honey and a little rapeseed oil.

I only added a small amount of honey to take the edge off the bitter cacao powder as I don’t like overly sweet things, but it can easily be made sweeter for other tastes. You can also use cocoa powder instead of cacao.

I ended up with quite a lot of it so I thought I’d play with some. Consequently these muffins are packed with it!!

Healthy, protein packed, sourdough beauties!

This is what I mixed up:

50g active starter

300g hazelnut cacao butter

200g oat milk

200g plain flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

2 eggs

I added a handful of chocolate chips to half of them.

I made half of them without the choc chips or added sugar, for me to test some, but you might prefer things sweeter than I do so feel free to add sugar or honey to the mixture.

I mixed the ingredients all together well but careful to not over mix it.

Spooned the mixture into 12 muffins liners.

Baked at 200C fan/220C non fan for around 18 mins until a sharp knife came out clean.

They came out with lovely crunchy tops and soft interiors. For me, they tasted better later and the next day once cooled and the flavours had developed. The sponge stayed soft and lovely even the day after that. I was definitely happy with these.

Look at that light fluffy sponge! So lovely!

Feel free to substitute the oat milk for milk of your choice, plain flour for white spelt flour or all purpose flour, and my hazelnut cacao butter with hazelnut cocoa butter or hazelnut for a really sweet hit! You could also increase the amount of starter for more of a sourdough flavour, and reduce the amount of flour and milk. Have a play!

Happy Baking!!!

My sourdough cheese soufflés….

This idea has been floating round my brain for a while now and this week I finally tested it out and this was the outcome….beautiful airy cheese soufflés, rich from the eggs and with the flavour of cheese, but with the added tang of sourdough. SOOOOOO a good! Tasty, light, textured, perfect morsels. For me, a total winner!

As this was pure experiment – let me clarify, I have never ever made any form of soufflé, sourdough or otherwise before this – I only made a small amount of batter so feel free to increase it. This made 4 small soufflés, in 8cm (internal) diameter pots.

The idea came from thinking about the light bubbly airy nature of sourdough starter mixed with the light airy nature of a soufflé. In my mind it made perfect sense! And luckily the result was fabulous, even if I say so myself! I immediately ate 3 just to be totally sure 😆😆😆😆

Small but perfectly formed and so very tasty!!!!!

It was so exciting to watch them cook as they grew very quickly, and very well! I was dancing round my kitchen in excitement.

I am so happy with the outcome, I hope you love them too if you try them. I know they could have risen more evenly, I know they’re not ‘perfect’ in the world of soufflés, but I don’t care! It worked and they taste so good, to me they’re perfectly beautiful sourdough cheese soufflé babies!

Here’s what I did…

Ingredients

100g bubbly active starter

100g whole/full fat milk

100g grated medium/mature cheddar (depending just how much you love cheese!)

2 eggs, separated into yolks and whites

Butter to grease the pots

Ground almonds, 4 tablespoons (use finely grated Parmesan or breadcrumbs for a different finish)

Method

Preheat the oven to 180C/360F fan assisted/convection or 200C/390F non fan/non convection, and place an oven tray inside to preheat.

Grease your ramekins, or small ceramic pots, with butter, then sprinkle ground almonds/almond flour into each pot and tap it around to create a layer inside each pot, covering the base and up the sides.

In a medium bowl, make the batter by adding the starter, milk, egg yolks and cheese. Stir it all together well.

In another clean bowl, whisk the eggs whites until they just hold their peaks.

Gently scrape the whisked egg whites into the batter.

Using a metal spoon, gently fold the eggs whites into the batter, using a figure 8 action, or cutting and stirring round the bowl. Do this carefully to mix them in whilst protecting the air that you’ve whisked into the whites. Do not over mix. This is crucial.

Gently spoon the batter into the prepared bowls filling them evenly and to the top of the pots if possible.

‘Top hat’ each one by running a cutlery knife, or clean finger nail, around the edge of each pot, just the very tip of the knife, so that the mixture doesn’t stick. (I didn’t do this very well hence the uneven growths!)

Place the pots onto the preheated tray in the oven.

After 15 minutes turn the oven down to 160C/320F fan assisted/convection or 180C/360F non fan/non convection, and bake for another 15 minutes.

DO NOT OPEN THE OVEN UNTIL FULLY BAKED. If you do they will collapse.

Serve immediately.

They may start to collapse quickly but it’s all part of the fun!

Voila! My new creation! Welcome to the world sourdough cheese soufflés!

I am sharing my soufflés with everyone at the weekly Fiesta Friday link party this week – join in the fun!

Sourdough Uzbek flatbreads…

I’ve been wanting to try making ‘Lepyoshka’ Uzbek flatbreads ever since I saw my friend Sally make them and, of course, I wanted to convert them to sourdough. So this week I did!

I purchased the stamp from this Etsy seller a few weeks ago especially; they’re so lovely, it would be easy to fill your cupboard with them!!

I was very happy with my first attempt, you can just about see the pattern created by the special stamp, but moreover, with the addition of yoghurt in the dough they tasted great. They were lovely immediately from the oven, still good a few hours later, and then again just as tasty the next day when heated up again in the toaster.

To make them I made a stiffer dough than usual by using a mix of wholemeal and white flour, plus the yoghurt in place of water. I used a 0% fat Greek yoghurt (just because that’s what I had available, I’d use full fat next time) so it added a real tang to the flavour, and an almost cheesy taste once baked.

To use the stamp and stop it from sticking to the dough I dunked it in water for each use, then firmly pressed it into the dough and pulled directly back up and out again.

For these I used up lots of young starter, from the starters I’ve been playing with in my kitchen recently, and less yoghurt, but you don’t need to. You could use less of your established starter and more yoghurt to create the same consistency in the dough.

Ingredients

300g young starter

100g thick Greek yoghurt

200g strong white bread flour

50g strong wholemeal flour

20g olive oil

1tsp salt

Method

I used my usual master recipe process to create and build up the dough, then placed the bowl in the fridge overnight for it to develop, as well as to protect it from the warm night.

The next day I let the dough come back up to room temp, sprinkled the counter with water then turned the dough out onto the counter and cut it into equal(ish) portions.

I rolled these into balls, flattened them out with my fingers and pressed them into rounds.

I placed each round onto a tray lined with parchment paper and I then used a spoon to flatten out a circle in the middle into which I pressed the stamp.

I then placed them in a cold oven, turned it up to 220C fan and baked them for 17-18 minutes.

The result is a lovely soft edge with a crunchy thinner stamped middle.

I will definitely be making these again, and adding them to my courses 🙂

Nut butter sourdough…

I have been playing with adding nut butters to my doughs; I love nut butters, especially almond butter, so for me to mix of sourdough with nut butter seemed like a marriage made in heaven, and I can now report, that sourdough loves them too!

This loaf was made by adding peanut butter to a portion of my starter Star. The loaf came out beautifully, it was very sour and only very slightly nutty, so next time I did things differently.

In this loaf, above, I added 100g of almond butter to the dough and again it was lovely, with a hint of nuttiness and extra sourness.

The texture and outcome was lovely, and you can see the crumb below.

So in this loaf, above, I went further and added 200g of almond butter to my standard master recipe dough, as you can see the dough was wonderfully firm, and the colour from the nut butter spread through it.

This photo below shows just how much the dough grew with the added almond butter..

And this one shows just how lovely and firm the dough became after it’s final prove in the fridge..

So good! The flavour was nutty and sour and highly recommended. The loaf baked to a lovely crust, with a soft, tasty interior, packed full of the goodness from the almond butter and the extra protein.

The outcome of these loaves and experiments is to say…try it!

Adding nut butters to sourdough works really well. There needs to be enough to taste it if you want the nuttiness, or if you’re looking for a way to make your loaves more sour, try adding 50-100g peanut butter to your dough – it works!

Note: I use nut butters that are made from 100% of the nuts only, with no other additions. If you use nut butters with added salt you might want to reduce the amount of salt that you add to the dough.

To make your dough, use your standard process, I always use my master recipe, and add your portion of nut butter right from the start with everything else.

The dough will be sticky initially but as you work with it the stickiness will reduce and the nut butter will become incorporated.

The dough will be lovely and firm, and the oils from the nut butter will work through the dough without it getting slimy.

If you try it, let me know!

Buttermilk and tahini sourdough loaf…

In my Facebook group, ‘sourdough with foodbod’, I recently launched a new challenge to feed a portion of our starters with something new, the aim being to have fun and to see what we might create, some ideas will work, and some won’t, and that’s the fun of it…

We always feed our starters the best possible flour and water, but what would happen if we fed them something totally different? A different liquid, or a different type of flour, or something instead of flour? Just to see what would happen, what the reaction would be, what the flavour outcome might be..? The possibilities are endless!

**For this challenge, I highly recommend using just a portion of your precious starter, and keeping the rest safe and sound. So for example, I fed my lovely Star and separated some portions of her into new bowls to have some to play with without affecting my standard cherished base amount. I always always make sure that I keep an unadulterated base amount of my precious, beautiful Star whatever sourdough experiments I do.

For this loaf I fed 50g of Star with my favourite buttermilk & tahini sauce; to make the sauce I blended 50g of tahini with a 284ml pot of buttermilk.

And as you can see, Star liked it as much as I do! This photo above shows the mix after 8 hours.

This photo above shows the mix the next morning.

This produced a firm spongy starter, very much like a low hydration starter or ‘pasta madre’, full of lovely texture.

To make the dough I added more tahini to some water (I blended 50g of tahini with 450ml of water) and used that in the dough to add even more flavour, and it worked perfectly. The resulting loaf had a nice crust, and a close crumb, due to the dairy element, and a lovely subtle flavour of sesame seeds. I will definitely do this again.

To try the flavour, you could add the tahini to the dough whilst using your standard starter, or you could play with it like it did.

This is what I did..

Day 1

I fed 50g of Star with 30g of strong white bread flour + 30g of my buttermilk & tahini sauce (details above), covered and left on the counter

8 hours later I fed the whole mixture 50g of strong white bread flour + 50g of buttermilk & tahini sauce, covered and left on the counter overnight

Day 2

I had a bowl of lovely textured thick happy starter, as seen above.

To mix up the dough I used:

100g of the buttermilk & tahini starter

500g of strong white bread flour

350g of a water and tahini mix

1tsp salt

I then followed my usual process to work with the dough and bake her the next day.

The dough was lovely and firm, a joy to score, and it baked beautifully from a cold start.

The crumb was closer than other loaves might be, this is due to the dairy element. You could really smell the tahini in the bread and you could taste it in each bite without it being too strong.

Definitely a success in our house!

If you decide to experiment with your starter, do tag me and #starterfun wherever you share it, and enjoy the fun! I’ve already got more experiments to share, coming soon…