Like every single other white man in his 30s the pandemic has got me making sourdough. It’s about time really. I’ve had a couple of day classes on it in the past but always fell at the first hurdle when I got home; remembering to keep the starter alive. But here I am 3 loaves deep and with a pretty healthy starter stored away. I’m not here to talk you through bread baking though, I’m actually going to suggest something to do with leftover starter; spelt sourdough pancakes.
So many recipes for alternative uses for sourdough starter seem to involve hundreds of grams of the stuff. If you’re not keeping a huge starter then that can make it very awkward. A large number of sourdough pancake recipes also call for numerous other ingredients, making them both more expensive, complex and time consuming. The beauty of this recipe is that it’s simply 5 simple ingredients:
- Sourdough starter
- Spelt flour
- Milk
- Sugar
- Baking powder
This spelt sourdough pancake recipe makes a pretty huge stack of light & fluffy pancakes. We’ve actually frozen a few to have in the future when we’re not so time rich. We topped ours with yoghurt, homemade rhubarb curds, nuts and some syrup, but these pancakes would work pretty well with whatever you wanted to top them with, even something savoury.
What do you use your leftover sourdough starter for?
Spelt Vegan Sourdough Pancakes
Ingredients
- 25 g Sourdough starter (I use my discarded starter that’s 100% hydration and ripe)
- 150 g Spelt flour
- 300 ml Oat milk (any vegan or dairy milk would work here)
- 2 tbsp Golden caster sugar
- 2 tsp Baking powder
Instructions
- Combine the starter with the flour into a bit of a paste in a large mixing bowl.
- Mix in the spelt flour, milk and golden caster sugar. Whisk until everything is properly incorporated.
- Cover the mixing bowl with a damp tea towel and leave in a warm place for at least 4 hours. I usually leave mine overnight so I can make them for breakfast. See notes for additional suggestions. It should be slightly bubbly when it’s ready to use.
- Heat a frying pan or skillet over a medium heat.
- While the pan is heating up, mix the baking powder through the batter
- Lightly oil the pan, making sure it coats the surface.
- Add a small ladleful of batter to the hot pan, spreading it to about a 10cm circle.
- This is quite a bubbly mixture, so the usual trick of watching for bubbles may not work, but keep an eye on the middle of the pancake and check the underside. Once it’s browned you should be able to flip it. In a hot pan I was getting around 1 minute per side.
- Flip and cook the other side. Transfer to a pancake and keep warm while you make up the others.
- Top with whatever you wish. Freeze any leftovers for another time.
Notes
- I use a 100% hydration starter that’s completely ripe and bubbling.
- I tend to bake this recipe by using starter discarded in the evening so that the batter can sit overnight and ferment. You could do it from the morning’s discard if you wanted to have them for lunch or dinner.
