I’m not a recipe creator. I admire those people who are because it seems to me there’s got to be a lot of failures in the process. I’m not afraid of failure, but if I’m being honest, my perfectionist nature isn’t the biggest fan. I do follow recipes to varying degrees. Some are followed to the letter because it seems like you shouldn’t be messing with things you don’t particularly understand. Others I use more as a guideline, and I modify willy-nilly. And said modifications have varying degrees of success. Which I’m sure doesn’t surprise you even a little bit.
Since I started on my serious sourdough journey (as opposed to my slap-dash approach of years past), I’ve realized that sourdough discard is an animal all its own. When I was strengthening my starter, I was feeding it every 12 hours. Now I’m down to mostly just once a day, but this process creates a serious amount of sourdough discard. Sometimes I love sourdough discard more than the sourdough starter itself. Because discard is there for flavor and texture and you aren’t really relying on it for leavening. It’s low stress. And low maintenance. I keep my discard in a jar in the fridge for a month-ish and then use it whenever the mood strikes. One of my favorite sources of sourdough discard recipes is Amy Bakes Bread. The woman is a genius. And she’s out there creating these recipes, which is amazing. I’ve made a few of her recipes, but so far, I have two favorites. Her blueberry muffins and her granola.
Let’s talk about the blueberry muffins first. I live at 7,500 feet. That elevation makes baking anything a bit like a science experiment. The lack of air pressure makes things rise faster and typically they don’t have the structure to support the quick rise, so they fall. Cakes are especially notorious for cratering in the middle, but muffins and cupcakes tend to have flat, pancake-like tops that spread out too much (as do cookies). It has nothing to do with the quality of the recipe and everything to do with the ingredient ratios. There are some online resources for making adjustments for altitude, but more often than not they recommend you try this or try that and see what works (my perfectionist’s right eye is twitching at the thought). I have had good luck with the suggestions on the Wilton site.
Here’s the Blueberry Muffin recipe. I decrease the baking powder from 15 grams to 10, which is about a 1 tsp decrease. It seems like a lot, but it works. The muffins rise perfectly and don’t splat. The other modification I make doesn’t have as much to do with altitude for muffins, but it does matter for cakes. I decrease the sugar by about 10%. As I understand it, because your liquids evaporate faster at higher elevations, your baked goods, cakes especially, can have a higher sugar concentration and a weaker cell structure, which contributes to the center falling. In this particular recipe, I decrease the sugar because I don’t eat a lot of sugar and the muffins are sweet enough with 300 grams of sugar rather than the specified 330 grams. JG approves these as sweet enough and he has the taste buds of a 15 year old boy. Just sayin’.
The other recipe of Amy’s I make on repeat is her Sourdough Discard Granola. This stuff is amazing. Have you looked at the ingredient list on most store-bought granola? There’s a lot of sugar and … stuff in almost every brand. There are some that are better, but since I try to limit my sugar to honey or maple syrup, that’s fairly hard to find. I’ve made 4 batches of this granola and have used different fruits and nuts in each batch. My favorite current combo is dried blueberries and pecans, but I think it would be good with anything (or nothing – the first time I made it I didn’t add the fruit and nuts and it was still delicious). The one modification I make to this recipe is to omit the brown sugar and just use the honey to sweeten it. I don’t feel like I need to add more honey, but you certainly could if you wanted to. I would call this moderately sweet with a lovely sourdough tang, but I wouldn’t roll my eyes if it was a tiny bit sweeter, which I’m sure the brown sugar does for you. Another big plus of this recipe is the browned butter. I love browned butter and any recipe that starts with browned butter is a winner in my book. I cook mine until it’s pretty uniformly golden brown and store it in glass jars for weeks. I love it over yogurt in the morning or on an almond butter and jelly sandwhich for lunch.
If you aren’t into sourdough, check out Preppy Kitchen. He’s also a genius and I’ve never made anything bad from one of his recipes.
Do you have sourdough starter? Do you ever think you need one? If you do, what are your favorite recipes?
Stephanie
