Fried Sourdough Starter Recipe — Meadowlark Journal (2024)

FAQs

Is it okay to eat fried sourdough starter? ›

Chop the pan-fried sourdough starter into little bite slices and enjoy! Make sure to use good soy sauce for the best results.

In 2020, Seamus Blackley, the creator of Xbox and a seasoned baker himself, baked sourdough bread from dormant yeast samples that are 4,500 years old, according to the Atlas Obscura website.

Sourdough starters, essential for bread making, became especially significant during the California Gold Rush. Miners in the San Francisco area relied on sourdough starters as a substitute for commercial leavening agents, often keeping them warm on cold nights to preserve the yeast and bacteria.

BUT! You can also use that discard for baking. Some people will use it right away, in which case it'll still be pretty active. Other people prefer to store their sourdough discard until they have enough to bake with.

Keep feeding your starter, and you'll see normal activity (bubbles) return in a few days. If your starter has a bit of dark liquid on top, it's not dead! It simply means it's hungry and that it's time to feed it. Unless your starter has a pink or orange hue or is beginning to mold, you probably haven't killed it yet.

Things that Will Kill A Sourdough Starter

High Temperatures - preheating your oven with your sourdough starter inside can lead to your starter's demise - but it would have to be completely baked for it to be completely unresponsive to some TLC.

For most bakers, the answer is a clear no. Maurizio Leo, author of the award-winning bread cookbook The Perfect Loaf, still uses the first starter he ever made; it's now 12 years old. And while he's sentimental about that starter, he says its age doesn't really impact his bread.

As long as the starter is being fed regularly and rising and falling as it's meant to, a starter really can't be too old. Of course, it could also have been preserved in a dried form or even stored in the fridge. If the starter isn't dried and has not been fed regularly, then it could become moldy and no longer viable.

Sourdough remained the usual form of leavening down into the European Middle Ages until being replaced by barm from the beer brewing process, and after 1871 by purpose-cultured yeast. Bread made from 100% rye flour, popular in the northern half of Europe, is usually leavened with sourdough.

To revive the neglected sourdough starter, you will refresh it 3 times up to 5 times until the activity is back to what a healthy sourdough starter's activity is like: doubles in volume in 6-12 hours, large bubbles, ripe fruit/slight sour smell during active period, a tablespoon floats on water.

What did the pioneers use instead of yeast? ›

Pioneers used both corn meal and wheat flours for bread. They baked bread in cast iron bake kettles set in the coals of the open hearth. Pearlash, eggs, saleratus, an early chemical leavening preceding baking soda, and home-created yeast starters were used to leaven bread.

Sourdough—a symbiotic colony of yeast and bacteria used for leavening—is as tied to Alaska lore as dog sleds, snow, and a pair of Sorel boots. Pioneers who wandered the territory carrying sourdough starter in their packs became known as “sourdoughs”—a term that is now used to label an Alaskan old timer.

If you didn't discard a portion of your starter each time you feed it, two things would happen: Your starter would grow to an enormous, unmanageable size. Your starter would likely become more and more inhospitable to the bacteria and yeast we want as the mixture would become ever more acidic.

Sourdough discard is the unfed portion of your sourdough starter that you remove before you add fresh flour and water. Because of it's unfed state, it's not used to bake the delicious bread you know as sourdough, but more often than not, used in sourdough discard recipes.

You can store mature sourdough discard in the refrigerator indefinitely. As long as there is no mold, it is good to use. It may develop a grayish liquid on top called “hooch” which can be poured off before use or stirred in. If you stir it in, the flavor will become more sour.

Sourdough discard is rich in probiotics, which can help promote a healthy gut microbiome and improve digestion. It's also a good source of fiber, which can help regulate blood sugar levels, lower cholesterol, and promote feelings of fullness.

It is a very tasty snack. Depends on when you bake it, hydration level... If you've just fed it, it basically is dough. If you've let it ferment like you normally would when you're about to bake bread then it will likely turn out like over fermented bread.

Typical signs of food spoilage and mold include pink, orange, or green colors, white fuzzy spots, or sometimes areas that are darker with white areas on top. If you see any of these signs, I would recommend throwing your starter away and creating a new one.

You can get sick if you eat unbaked dough or batter made with flour containing germs. Germs are killed only when flour is baked or cooked. CDC investigated outbreaks linked to raw flour or cake mix in 2016, 2019, 2021, and 2023.