Homemade Sourdough Corn Dogs Recipe (Discard) (2024)

FAQs

What is the sourdough discard method? ›

As part of the feeding process, most bakers discard some of their sourdough starter before adding fresh flour and water to the jar. This is done to refresh the acidity levels (think sweet vs. sour smell) and to manage its overall growth in size. This technique is crucial for successful sourdough bread.

More Moisture: Adding discard to recipes adds extra moisture to the baked good. This can make for delicious muffins, pancakes, waffles and more! Flavor: Discard has gone through the fermentation cycle and typically has a more sour flavor from the bacteria.

You can always use this discard by directly mixing it into a dough for baking. Your discard, as long as it's in good shape, will leaven any bread dough just as well. The discard is just like a levain you would make for a recipe. The only difference is it's the same makeup as your starter.

A jar of sourdough discard serves as an insurance policy against starter death. If you have some discard on hand, remove a spoonful of it and feed it fresh flour and water in a clean jar. You should have a bubbly starter ready to bake with after a couple of feedings, depending on the discard's condition.

Experts recommend feeding a starter twice daily. And at each feeding, you hold onto 1/2 cup of your original starter, discard the rest, and then add its same weight in water and flour. With this schedule, you'd discard almost a cup of sourdough starter every day.

Remember, you can't use the discard from your homemade sourdough starter for the first 7 days. You can use sourdough discard in all kinds of sourdough discard recipes, including these no wait sourdough recipes, overnight sourdough discard recipes and sourdough discard recipes that use up a lot of discard.

Active starter and discard both come from the same sourdough starter. However, they are in different phases. Active starter has been fed flour and water within the last 12 hours or so and is growing until it hits its peak. Once it begins to fall it is considered discard.

If you don't discard your sourdough starter, it will grow too big and be unmanageable. Not to mention you will go through an unmentionable amount of flour. Let's say you start with 50g of flour & water on day 1.

You can simply compost the leftover inactive starter (ie: discard) OR consider incorporating it into un-leavened recipes or substituted in baked goods where you'd like to impart a more sour flavor profile.

I recommend keeping sourdough discard for about one week, but I do know others who keep it for much longer. After one week, there is a higher risk of mold or bad bacteria growing on the discard.

How to tell if sourdough discard is bad? ›

fuzzy mold that you might normally see on food. or something else. But it can also look like odd colors, particularly like an orange or a pink. So if you see, like, orange or pink streaking in your sourdough discard, that's bad bacteria, and you don't want to eat that, so it's time to throw that one away.

You can use old sourdough discard if it's been stored in the fridge, however, you really want to use it up within a week - 2 weeks max. It's better to use "fresh" discard in a sweet sourdough discard recipe. Use older discards in more savory recipes.

I left my sourdough discard out at room temperature for a few days. Is it okay? As long as your kitchen isn't too warm (I'd say 78°F or higher) your starter/discard will be fine stored at room temperature for at least a few days without feeding. The flavor will get more acidic the longer it sits.

It's actually quite difficult to kill sourdough starter. And that black stuff isn't harmful, either — it's perfectly safe. The inky liquid is simply telling you the starter is hungry. After 8 weeks in the refrigerator without being fed, what began as a happy, healthy starter (l) was hungry and hooch-topped (r).

After you use it, feed it, put it back in the fridge. Try that once or twice and see how your bread tastes. If you like it better, it's another way to go about things, otherwise, sticking with what works for you now is not a bad thing! I keep my discard in the refrigerator.

Sourdough discard is after the starter has peaked, and it has started to come down. It is the portion that you would typically throw away before feeding again. Once you have an established + healthy sourdough starter, you can start to use your sourdough discard in recipes! That way, you don't have to ever throw it out.

I would say the best way to differentiate between discard and active starter is that active starter is starter that has doubled and peaked whereas discard is any starter that is not the main starter and is not being used in an active sourdough recipe as a leavening agent.

If your recipe calls for more than 227g (about 1 cup) of starter, feed it without discarding until you've reached the amount you need (plus 113g to keep and feed again).

A “fed” sourdough starter is ripe, has fermented for several hours, and is ready to be used in a bread-making recipe. An “unfed” sourdough starter has not been fed in a while and is essentially considered sourdough starter discard.