Using up sourdough starter

[Ms_Derious]

I've recently been trying to transfer away from traditionally yeasted breads to sourdough, mainly because I like the taste, and since I don't eat a lot of bread, traditionally yeasted breads often get mould before I finish a loaf.

For some reason, whenever I keep a culture in the fridge it seems so require 2-3 days to get over the shock, so I'm trying to keep a culture bubbling away on the counter top, but this requires feeding once or twice a day... which is now at a risk of taking the whole house over, somewhat akin to 'The Blob'

Out of interests in sustainability, the idea of 'throwing out' excess starter culture doesn't work for me. I've tried offering it to people are work, but many of them have never even heard of sourdough, and seem to think they will die should they ingest any of these wild yeasts that live all around them...One of them even cautioned me it would give me thrush!

Anyway, at risk of my culture either generating its own gravitational pull, or developing some form of primative sentiency, I thought it best to use up some of it as a preventative measure ;)

So far, I've come up with the following uses

Making sourdough wraps for sandwiches to take to work
Pouring off the hooch and using to make 'bakers clay/playdough'
Cooking in the skillet after a messy dish to clean the pan... then feeding this to the birds (This cleans cast iron very well!)
Pizza bases
I'm going to try making Yorkshire Puddings with them too, but I've not tried that yet.

Anyone got any other ideas?

[Ms_Derious]

Well, the Yorkshire Puddings were an epic fail.

I have, however, realised the only way to keep my culture running well is to, at least once a day, discard all but 1/2 a cup, and top up with 1/2 of warm, previously boiled water and 50g of flour. This seems to make a lovely, bubbly culture.

Hoping this weekend's baking efforts will actually rise. Sure, I like the tangy taste, but I'm getting close to giving up because I have a lot of trouble getting a full rise from the dough :(

[DavidT]

Sourdough is delicious!

[Ms_Derious]

Project Sourdough is going very well now. It turns out, the secret to a good sourdough is to pretty much throw out all but a very small amount of the starter, then do a refreshment. Not sure why all of the interweb is trying to convince me I should feed it at least twice a day, regardless of how often I use it. Perhaps it's all the recipe sites are aimed at people feeding a lot more people than I do... eg, it's only ever really my husband and I eating, so I don't bake more than twice a week at the most.

I'm a bad girl who only feed her culture to top it back up after use. Seriously, its starving, Moby is doing a protest song and everything.

I've had the best results yet by basically dumping everything out of the jar and putting the 125ml of water and 50g of flour back into the 'dirty' jar... a few hours later it was as bubbly as heck. This has meant that basically, I generally end up throwing out about half a cup of mixture each time, which is about 30g of flour. This is less annoying then the huge amounts I was loosing before, but no where near as upseting.

However... that's still 30g of flour I don't like throwing out... even if it is Lidl's cheap as old chips stuff.