hey guys it's Bettie from BakerBettie.com and welcome back to another video
now today we are continuing on with our sourdough series and we are addressing
the topic of sourdough discard now if you are brand new to this series there
is a link down in the description box where you can watch all of the rest of
the videos and get caught up to us now in this video today we are going to
be talking about what sourdough discard is how you can reduce your discards so
you don't have a ton of it and what you can do with the discard you do have now
I'm also going to show you how I modify my muffin base recipe to use some of my
discard at the end of this video so make sure you keep watching so first let's
talk about what discard is now our sourdough discard is the part of our
sourdough starter that we get rid of every time we feed our starter now the
reason we do this is because if we were to feed the starter enough flour and
water to keep it healthy without ever getting rid of any of it our starter is
just going to keep getting bigger and bigger now I like to keep a jar in my
refrigerator where every time I go to feed my starter I just keep adding my
discard to it I like to put a date on it and I start a new jar about every month
it's likely is going to remain good for longer than a month but remember your
sourdough discard is an unfed starter so it does not stay alive indefinitely the
way you're fed sourdough starter does now there are a few different things
that you can do with the sourdough discard that you do have but first I
want to talk about how you can reduce your discard and the main ways you can
do that is by adjusting how often you feed your starter and how much you feed
your starter so if you are not going to be baking really frequently with your
sourdough starter I would definitely suggest keeping it in the refrigerator
and feeding it once every 7 to 10 days now when you do go to feed your
starter if it is a day that you are not going to be baking bread with it you can
do what I like to call a micro feeding so instead of keeping a larger portion
of your starter and feeding it enough flour in water that you would have
enough to bake a loaf of bread with you can keep a very small portion and feed
it the same ratios the 1 3 3 ratios like we learned in previous videos so that
you only have a very small amount to discard next time you need to feed it so
I will often keep only 5 grams of my starter and feed it 15 grams of flour
and 15 grams of water now I do this on days I'm not going to bake with it and
next time I go to feed my starter I only have 35 grams total starter to work with
so if it is a baking day I have a very small amount to discard and if it's not
a baking day it's still a very small amount to discard but even with this
method of reducing your discard you are always going to have some to deal with
so there are a few different ways that you can use it if you are somebody who
composts you can actually add it into your compost and that's a great way to
get rid of it without just throwing it in the trash can you can also put some
in a jar and gift it to friends so that they have their own sourdough starter to
bake with or you can actually dry your sourdough starter out so that you have a
backup if you ever do accidentally kill your active sourdough starter now I'm
going to link a really helpful article down in the description box for how you
can dry out your sourdough starter but it's a very easy process essentially
you're just going to spread it out really thin on some parchment paper and
let it dry and then you can take that dried starter and put it in an airtight
container in your freezer or refrigerator for about a year and then
you always have a backup on hand if something ever happens to your live
sourdough starter so the other thing you can do with your discard and this is my
favorite thing to do with your discard is to add it into some of your baking
recipes it works really well to add sourdough discard
into things like muffins pancakes waffles quick breads like banana bread
or zucchini bread and you can actually also add it into a yeast bread that is
made with dried yeast to give it some of that sourdough flavor but without all of
the really long fermentation time now there are a lot of recipes out there
that are written specifically to be made with sourdough discard so a little
googling is going to find you a lot of sourdough discard recipes but if you
have a favorite recipe that you would really like to use your discard in you
can actually pretty easily modify the recipe to use some of your discard
so our sourdough discard is equal parts flour and water and you need to account
for that when you are adding it into your recipe there really isn't a general
rule of thumb of how much you put into your recipe but I typically start with
about a hundred and twenty grams of my discard now that means I need to remove
60 grams of flour from my original recipe which is about a 1/2 cup of flour
and then I also need to remove 60 grams of liquid from the recipe to account for
the water in my discard and that's about 1/4 cup of liquid so this does mean that
this only really works for recipes that call for liquid ingredients things like
milk or water if you were trying to make something like a chocolate chip cookie
or a recipe that doesn't have one of those ingredients in it it would be best
to look for a sourdough discard recipe specifically written for something like
that so let's do this with my basic muffin
recipe as an example the dry ingredients in my muffins calls for two cups of
flour so I'm going to reduce that to one and a half cups to account for the
amount in my discard and 2/3 cup of granulated sugar and I'm adding one
tablespoon of baking powder and 1/4 teaspoon of salt
and I'm just going to whisk all of that together
now for our wet ingredients my original recipe calls for 2/3 of a cup of milk so
I'm going to go ahead and remove a fourth cup of that to account for the
liquid that is in my discard and I'm adding one egg along with one teaspoon
of vanilla extract
and a half cup of oil
now I'm also adding in 120 grams of my discard here and you do want to treat
this as part of your wet ingredients now just mix all of that together until well
combined and now I'm just going to mix the wet ingredients into the dry
ingredients until fully combined now you can add any mix-ins you like into this
batter it's a really great blueberry muffin batter chocolate chips nuts or
really anything you like or it's actually really delicious plain as well
you can find the full written recipe and printable instructions for these muffins
linked in the description box I'll see you guys next time