From our trusted source, Cooking Alaskan (paid link), comes a set of guidelines for converting your favorite baking recipe to using sourdough.
We recently found this, after years of having our “regular” recipes and “sourdough” recipes. I dug it up for Aly, who has been baking up a sourdough storm at college since taking some of our starter back with her after Christmas.
We ran into trouble with the way the recipe had originally been written. Based on Aly’s experience with the process, I’ve clarified the instructions a bit below:
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Take half the flour and all the liquid of any recipe, plus ½ – 1 cup sourdough starter. Mix and set aside in a warm place at least 10 hours (overnight).
When ready to bake, add remaining ingredients, including the second half of the flour, plus a little extra, but NOT THE YEAST.
Prepare according to original recipe.
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The original says add “the remaining ingredients,” but didn’t specify the second half of the flour, which appears to be the case. Aly’s first attempt at this proved to need more flour than that, so be warned.
However, it is just a first attempt; we haven’t experimented with it ourselves. Perhaps we should crowd source this right here on the Zeiger Family Homestead Blog . . . if you try this, or have experience with this sort of conversion, please comment and let us know.
With a little practice, though, this should change any basic recipe to sourdough. In most cases, the sourness of the sourdough will not be noticeable in the finished product, but you will have much of the starches in the finished product converted to protein by the sourdough.
I’ve had a lot to say about sourdough as we approach our starter’s 21st anniversary. On the 20th, I’ll have a final recommendation . . . for now.
Look here for the history of our family’sourdough starter, and a recipe for starting syour own.