Golden Sourdough Waffles - Easy Sourdough Starter Recipe! (2024)

FAQs

What can I make with my sourdough starter? ›

Longer fermentation

When it comes time to proof your dough, the longer you proof, the more sour the dough will be. As your dough proofs, the good bacteria eats up sugars and starches in the flour. This decreases the sweet undertone and creates a more sour undertone.

By discarding a portion of the starter and feeding it fresh flour and water, you help keep the bacteria and yeast balanced. It also helps maintain a milder flavor profile and prevents the starter from becoming overly sour. TIP: Collect the discard in a separate container in your fridge when you feed your starter.

While nailing a waffle's ideal texture is an elusive game, there's one surefire way to mess it up: Using a flour with too much protein structure. This eliminates bread flour, which is great for chewy loaves but too heavy for waffles.

After a few days, your daily 1/4 cup flour and water won't be enough to sustain your entire jar of starter, and your starter will be slow and sluggish, not much better than discard itself. But that's not necessarily a bad thing, depending on what you want to bake with it.

It would be best if you discarded some portion of your starter each time you feed it unless you want to continue to let it grow. Eventually, you need to discard the used “food” (flour and water) that's been used to sustain your starter during the last fermentation period.

If you have too much starter compared to the additional flour and water you're adding, your hungry starter consumes all the nutrients and then it's not as bubbly.

There is no single best ratio, but I've found a ratio of 1:5:5 fed twice daily at 12-hour intervals to produce a sourdough starter that's strong and healthy. This ratio corresponds to 20% ripe starter carryover, 100% water, and 100% flour (a mix of whole grain rye and white flour) at each feeding.

The best flour blend for creating a new sourdough starter is 50% whole-meal flour (whole wheat or whole rye) and 50% bread flour or all-purpose flour. I recommend a 50/50 mix of whole wheat flour and bread flour.

Essentially making a sourdough starter is not an overly difficult process, but it does require a commitment of time and patience, as well as some dedicated equipment. Sometimes there are factors which mean making sourdough starter could be difficult. Perhaps you're working long hours or go out of town regularly.

How do you turn a discard into a starter? ›

By feeding the discard with fresh flour and water over a few consecutive feedings, the microbial activity can be restored, eventually turning it into a viable and active sourdough starter.

If no one around you has any, all you need to make your own is time and patience — and also flour and water. But here's a reliable shortcut: You can also create a sourdough starter with the help of a bit of store-bought yeast.

Not waiting until the iron heats up properly means your waffles will cook, but never achieve that satisfyingly crisp exterior. Overworking the batter will leave your waffles dense and chewy instead of light and airy. And stacking even the most perfect waffles will cause them to become soggy and limp in minutes.

Your sourdough starter is the foundation of baking sourdough bread. Through proper maintenance and a little attention, it can last indefinitely and provide you with countless healthy and delicious loaves of bread.

Does Sourdough Discard have the same benefits of Sourdough Starter? Technically, sourdough discard has the same benefits as sourdough starter, since they are both wild yeast ferments. In terms of beneficial lactic acid bacteria, natural yeasts acetic acid and colonies of microbes, they are both full of them.

I place mine into the fridge when I don't need to bake anything for a few days. Because if it sits on the counter I have to feed it to maintain. But if you place it in the fridge you do not have to feed it. So this “pause” makes sense so you don't build up excess sourdough starter.

Warmer homes or frequent baking will require more frequent feeding (around every 12 hours), while colder homes every 24 hours. Storing your sourdough starter in the fridge will require feeding around once a week. It can, however, be stored up to two months in the fridge without being fed.