How to use your Sourdough Discard

Are you really a home baker if you have not baked sourdough? As the pros know, and the new bakers quickly find out, with all that sourdough baking comes the waste of the sourdough discard.

Building a strong sourdough starter — a mixture of water and flour that yields natural bacteria and wild yeast, which both give that signature sour flavour and leaven the dough — requires frequent “feeds” of freshwater and flour to encourage active yeast and bacterial growth. During the feeding process, a portion of the starter — known as the “discard” — is generally tossed away.

Luckily, there are ways to reduce or cut out that waste, by either storing the sourdough starter in a way that eliminates the need for a discard step or using one of the many recipes that feature the discarded sourdough starter, including biscuits, crackers, pancakes and more.

Here are some delicious ideas that use up sourdough discard;

➡️ Sourdough granola and granola bars – A great, easy way to use up discarded sourdough starter is as a binder for granola, instead of the usual maple syrup or honey. Toss oats, nuts, seeds, dried fruit, spices, and other granola ingredients together with the discard to coat before baking. For granola bars, add flour and other binding ingredients to create a thicker dough.

➡️ Sourdough flatbread and pizza – If a weekly loaf of freshly baked sourdough bread sounds good, how about a weekly batch of fresh pizza? It’s easy to use the extra starter to make sourdough pizza crust or focaccia, using the starter to help give the pizza some rise, as well as a hearty bite.

➡️ Sourdough crackers – One of the simplest ways you can use extra sourdough starter is by making crackers. Add the discard to flour, butter, salt and herbs to form a dough. I use @kingarthurbaking sourdough crackers which freeze well too, which means there’s no reason to toss that extra discard!