Homemade Sourdough Pancakes From Discarded Starter
The next time you go to feed your sourdough starter, rather than just throwing away a portion of it, consider using your discarded sourdough starter to make some delicious, fluffy sourdough pancakes. Not just for fancy cafes and restaurants, as long as you’ve got some sourdough starter that you’re keeping and feeding, homemade sourdough pancakes are an easy and tasty way to use up some of that discarded sourdough starter.
Like everything using sourdough, this recipe does take some time. While some sourdough pancake recipes require your batter to rest overnight, this one is quicker than that. You can have this batter ready to use in just 3 hours.
However, if you’re wanting to serve sourdough pancakes for breakfast, you’ll need to get up extra early to start the process, or, you could start the night before and turn them into overnight sourdough pancakes if that fits in with your timing better.
My family are happy to eat them at any time of day so I usually just make them when I’m feeding my starter in the morning, which gives us a batch of homemade sourdough pancakes for a late morning tea or lunch.
This is how I make my homemade sourdough pancakes from the discarded sourdough starter:
Rather than just discarding some of my mother dough before feeding it, I measure out 250g of the starter into a bowl or jug - I like to use a jug to make it easy to pour out the pancake batter when cooking.
Don’t forget to feed your remaining mother dough culture and put it away.
Add 170g of plain all purpose flour to the sourdough starter.
Mix it together a little with a fork and add ½ cup of water.
Mix it all together with a fork - it will be a fairly thick mixture.
Cover the mixture with a clean kitchen towel and leave it somewhere warm for at least 3 hours. This is where you could leave it longer or potentially overnight if that suited your timeline best.
If your house is cold, consider leaving it on a warm hot water bottle as I often do to help to kick it into action.
After your (at least 3) hours or maybe even overnight, your pancake batter should be looking something like this:
This is the bit that I always find a bit heartbreaking - you have to “stir down” the dough. It feels sad to lose all those lovely bubbles of air that have risen within the mixture but, it’s the only way forward with this recipe!
So, take a fork and give it a stir and your lovely, bubbly mixture will shrink back to look something like this:
Add a couple of lightly beaten eggs.
Mix the eggs through well until combined.
Then add ½ teaspoon of baking soda (bicarb soda).
Once this is mixed through well the mixture will start to get lovely and bubbly again.
And now you’re ready to cook!
Heat a frying pan or griddle and add some butter to fry your pancakes in.
Pour mixture onto pan leaving space between pancakes to make flipping easy.
Once you see some big holes appearing in the batter it’s time to flip.
Once flipped they don’t take too long to cook on the other side.
It’s a lovely, thick batter that makes light, fluffy pancakes. You can make them larger if you like or smaller to be more like pikelets or drop scones.
There is no sugar or sweetener in this batter so you will most likely want to serve them with some maple syrup (or jam/jelly).
I sometimes like to mash up a banana or two and mix the mashed banana through the batter before cooking to make light, fluffy sourdough banana pancakes.
Homemade Sourdough Pancakes Recipe
Homemade Sourdough Pancakes From Discarded Starter
Ingredients
- 250 g unfed sourdough starter
- 170 g plain/all-purpose flour
- ½ cup of water
- 2 eggs lightly beaten
- ½ teaspoon baking soda bicarb soda
- Butter for frying
- Optional: 1-2 mashed bananas if you want to make sourdough banana pancakes
Instructions
- Combine sourdough starter, flour, and water in a mixing bowl or jug.
- Cover and leave to rest in a warm place for at least 3 hours (overnight if you prefer).
- Stir down the risen dough.
- Add the eggs and the baking soda and stir to combine.
- (If making banana sourdough pancakes, add mashed banana here).
- Melt butter in frying pan or griddle and add circles of mixture.
- Once large bubbles appear on the surface, flip the pancakes.
- Remove from heat once cooked and serve.
Don’t be scared to give homemade sourdough pancakes a try, as you can see, they’re really very easy to make (they just take a bit of time) and, just like sourdough pizza, sourdough chocolate chip cookies and sourdough apple cake, they’re a great way to use up some of that leftover discarded sourdough starter.
