Savoury biscuits with sourdough

May 14, 2017

We store must of our sourdoughs in the fridge, but the one made with Helena is kept in room temperature. This means regular feeding, and this means a lot of discarded sourdough. We’re learning to tackle this today.

Większość naszych zakwasów trzymamy w lodówce, ale ten zrobiony z Heleną stoi na blacie kuchennym. To oznacza regularne karmienie, a to z kolei oznacza dużo wyrzucanego zakwasu. Dziś spróbujemy sobie z tym poradzić.

We chose to keep Flower on the kitchen counter mainly out of curiosity. We never did that before and thought it would be time consuming and inconvenient. It hasn’t been too bad so far. We feed it once a day by giving it a stir and pouring most of it to a food waste bin, next we add 50 g of water and 40 g of strong flour. If we forget once, it will forgive us. When we left for two weeks, it went into the fridge and back out after returning. It did underperform temporarily afterwards, but got back in shape after two days or so.

What to do with discards? We usually throw it away, but from time to time we try to find a use for it, like the waffles. Now I stumbled upon a thread on the fresh loaf that has loads of ideas. We chose the biscuits for a start.

This recipe uses the sourdough discard mainly for the flavour, the rise comes from baking powder and baking soda. They turn out quite dry and can use some extra water, which I mentioned in the ingredients. I added Parmesan cheese (other time Cheddar) and caraway seeds to it which was a spot on. I didn’t have enough discard, so I added the rest from a rye sourdough. This worked well.

Planning

None. Mix, bake, enjoy.

Ingredients

170 g plain wheat flour, plus extra for dusting
10 g Parmesan/Cheddar
3 g salt (1/4 teaspoon)
7 g baking powder (2 teaspoons)
2 g baking soda (1/2 teaspoon)
Pinch of caraway seeds (maybe two, try once and adjust to your needs)
Pinch of pepper
80 g soft butter
250 g sourdough discard
30 g water

Preparation

Set your oven to 200 C with a fan or 220 without. Know your oven
Mix the dry stuff
Cut the butter into small pieces and incorporate it into the dry mixture
Add the wet stuff
Combine into a dough
Flatten on a floured surface to about 15 mm thickness. Use your hands, it’s not worth getting a rolling pin dirty
Cut out desired shapes and place them on a baking tray
Bake for about 10-15 minutes
Let them cool down

I recommend eating them with something, as they can be a bit dry on their own. I took them for lunch the other day, had them with butter, smoked mackerel, cocktail tomatoes and chives. Absolutely gorgeous. The serving idea comes from Gosia. I took four, should have taken six or seven to replace my regular lunch and share one or two with my workmates. Today I’m taking a couple to have with a lentil soup.