Juicy Post: The Case For Cheater Sourdough Starter

Pandemic Preoccupations

During the pandemic (known as DTP), the Italy Insider gave me a gift of a year of Master Class. A brilliant idea, and I explored lessons from Mexican cooking to writing. I watched Thomas Keller make the fussiest roast chicken ever and chortled at Gordon Ramsay’s not very helpful antics – he is very proud of his body build. Dominique Ansel actually gave very detailed pastry lessons. But the prize for me were the lessons from Apollonia Poilane about her breads. I watched her videos over twenty times, seriously. I, too, became a pandemic cliche and went down the sourdough starter rabbit hole. She used yogurt in hers, and after fiddling with a recent book on sourdough starters, I think I prefer hers.

That said, although there was a mild interest evinced in my loaves, English muffins (which aren’t English) and another author’s quite complex pancakes recently,  someone here pulled out his favorite cookbook and announced his verdict.  While he was moderately amused by my ritual devotions to twice daily discards and feedings of my current starter (not the Poilane one) he thought the pancakes were better with the ersatz starter from his politically incorrect cookbook published forgivably in 1971 –  Sunday Breakfast – A Cookbook For Men. And, you know,  jokey male writing aside, tasting both pancakes, I think he’s right!

Cheater Starter

I have not tried making bread with this quicky starter, but the pancakes, waffles and biscuits were pretty damn good. Here’s the breezy recipe for Craig Michael’s sourdough starter verbatim:

Take one package of powdered yeast and mix it in a medium sized bowl with 1 cup of flour and 3/4 cup warm water. Cover the bowl and leave it in a warm place in your kitchen for at least 3 days. Stir it around a little bit when you get the urge. When it smells sour, it’s ready.

Put the starter in a small pot. The type used for cheesespreads works well, however any small jar will do. Do not fill the jar (or pot) over 3/4 full. Place it in your refrigerator and it will keep forever. If you use it occasionally and it doesn’t get moldy, you may well have this starter for the rest of your life.

No instructions on how to maintain the starter for the rest of your life. He just assumes you will be making one of the three following recipes frequently, You will pour off a portion of your pancake batter to create a renewed starter. My husband usually pours off  about 1 1/2 cups when he makes his pancake or waffle batter. He then pops it in the fridge and usually forgets about its existence for a couple of weeks, checks to see if it is moldy (it never is) and if there is still a sour smell, he uses it again. I, being the nervous type , have suggested that one should at the very least follow the instructions from trusty King Arthur Baking: weigh 113 grams each of starter, flour and warm water and repeat this ritual every 12 hours. He rolls his eyes, and tells me that if it doesn’t work, he will just make a new one. He even questioned my twice daily waste of sourdough discard. I must admit to a few pangs, watching the discard slowly slide down the kitchen sink drain. But he does love these sourdough discard crackers, which I make frequently

Manly Sourdough Pancakes and Waffles

So setting my starter hand-wringing aside, here are the instructions for these really, really good pancakes: 

Pour 2 1/2 cups white all purpose flour and 2 cups of warm water into a large mixing bowl and then add all your sourdough starter, and mix with a spoon until it is somewhat smooth. Cover the bowl with a plate and set this out in a warm place overnight. You are, in essence, creating an enlarged sourdough base. 

The next morning, you should see a bubbly, somewhat risen  batter (depending on the strength of your neglected starter). One night the batter rose out of the bowl, and oozed out under the plate onto the counter. Remove about 1 to 1 1/2 cups of this batter to be your new starter. Return it to the jar, cover and store in the refrigerator. Proceed to neglect it. 

Add one egg and 2 1/2 tablespoons of cooking oil (we use sunflower oil) 1/4 cup milk, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon baking soda and 3 tablespoons of sugar to the remaining batter and mix well. Heat the griddle over medium high heat. I grease my griddle with butter each time. I use  a 1/3 cup ladle, but you can make these pancakes even smaller. You can also freeze leftover batter, which is better than freezing the pancakes.

  To make waffles, you will add 2 tablespoons of cooking oil to the batter and follow the instructions of your waffle maker. These waffles are more lacy and softer than my other favorite, Lenotre waffles. They, too, do not freeze well, so again, better to freeze the batter. 

A Biscuit Footnote

The author’s version of sourdough biscuits is a surprising success. In this case you take 1/2 cup of the sourdough starter and mix it with 1 cup whole milk and 2 tablespoons sugar in a large mixing bowl. Mix thoroughly, cover the bowl and keep at room temperature until it has doubled in bulk. My kitchen is cold, so it took over 2 hours. The author advises that you can actually start the biscuits when you start the pancake batter. 

Turn this dough onto 1 cup of flour on your counter.  Add  1 teaspoon each of salt, baking powder and baking soda to 1/2 cup of flour. Mix well and sprinkle or sift over the dough. Mix the dry ingredients over the soft dough with your hands, kneading lightly to get the correct consistency. A bench scraper is helpful here. Lightly roll to about a one  inch thickness. He then instructs you to cut your biscuits and dip them into cooking oil. I dipped mine into melted butter.  Then place them close together in a nine inch pan – he recommends a square one, but I  placed them in a round cake pan.  Pre-heat your oven to 375F and allow them to rise for half an hour before baking them for about 30 minutes. 

I was shocked that these worked! And the biscuits are really a cross between a classic biscuit and a Parker House roll. Below is a recipe card that outlines the ingredients and steps for the starter, pancakes, waffles and biscuits, which the manly cookbook did not provide.