For anyone who is concerned about removing a quarter cup of flour each time you feed your active starter, here’s an AMAZINGLY YUMMY pancake recipe that you can make using your discarded starter (when it’s not going to making loaves). Simply save up a few feeds’ worth of excess starter and when you have enough, in this case 1 cup, mix up a Saturday morning breakfast batch of pancakes. Even if it’s Tuesday night; nuthin’ wrong with pancakes for dinner.

(Sorry, this recipe is from FoodZaar and didn’t come with weight equivalents)

Sourdough Pancakes

Serves six.

1.5 cup flour
1 tbsp sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1 tbsp baking powder
1/4 cup melted butter
1 cup milk
3 eggs
1 cup extra sourdough starter

Sift together first five ingredients. Beat eggs and milk together in a separate bowl then add with sourdough to dry ingredients. Let rest about 10 minutes. Gently mix in melted butter and cook on hot griddle.

For waffles:

Separate egg yolks and whites. Beat yolks with milk and butter and add with sourdough to dry ingredients. Let rest; then fold in stiffly beaten egg whites. Bake in a hot waffle iron or on a griddle.

Please note: “Extra sourdough starter” means the discard from an ACTIVE starter’s feed. While you’re starting a starter from scratch, what you’re removing isn’t excess starter, that should really be put in the compost. Once your starter is fully fired up and you could make real sourdough brad with it, any feed discard from there on can be considered “extra starter”.