Spelt Sourdough Bread – no starter wasted
100% spelt sourdough loaves
I have a frugal nature. As I can claim neither Scottish nor Jewish heritage I’ll thank my maternal Grandmother who survived a poverty stricken childhood, the Great Depression and rationing that came with two world wars. My dear Grandma lived to the ripe old age of 98yrs, well into my adulthood and she imbued in me the sense that wasting food was just like putting money in the garbage bin.
In this age of reckless consumerism I find myself bristling with self righteousness when I read of the quantities of food that are discarded, not just by householders, but also my producers and retailers. While I applaud initiatives like Oz Harvest and Second Bite who collect unwanted food and distribute it to the needy, they are not interested in the small amounts from my kitchen, that’s up to me.
Not once have I activated my sourdough starter and ended up with the precise quantity needed to bake a loaf. It gets worse if I plan to make two loaves and feed my starter extra quantities of flour and water. I know there are numerous recipes that make pancakes and pizza bases using the extra, but it’s bread that’s in demand in our household so I started messing with my basic recipe and recalculating the flour water and salt based on the weight of starter I actually had remaining after storing a quantity for the next bake.
My muddled thinking and inaccurate calculations seemed to have little outcome on the loaves.
When my partner in life, my total opposite announced he’d like to have a go at baking bread I was shocked. He doesn’t cook.
After lovingly and generously tending the feeder for the day, when it came to mixing the dough he took one look at my messy recipe page with multiple pencil calculation and offered to make me the swanky table you see below.
Together we made a large batch of 100% spelt bread dough.
His inaugural loaf, made with his half was a huge success. The Fig, Walnut and Cinnamon loaf I made with the rest was delicious too, worthy of a stand alone post, soon.
I’ll never discard sourdough starter again.
SOURDOUGH LOAF CALCULATIONS – NO STARTER WASTE
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26 comments on “Spelt Sourdough Bread – no starter wasted”
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Please Pass the Recipe by Sandra Gay is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
Please Pass the Recipe 
Thank you for sharing! I am also in Brisbane and am just starting on the sourdough journey. I have been looking for a 100% spelt sourdough recipe during to intolerances and am very excited to give your recipe a go – and I have no idea what I am doing regarding the calculations, so I am grateful for your share and post.
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Hi Giselle, welcome to the wondrous and frustrating world of sourdough. I recently updated another of my posts (link below) relating to spelt sourdough and I suggest you follow the method there. I have been baking sourdough for 5 years now and have found it’s an ever evolving process.
May I suggest that at the beginning you choose one formula and stick with it until you have consistent success. This way you will learn to read your dough and how temperature impacts on it. It’s very different winter and summer
Also there is a fabulous private FB group Sourdough Australia that you should look out for. The moderator closed membership recently because ISO created an overwhelming interest. Once life returns to “normal” it will be a fabulous resource for you as well as help from experienced bakers.
Good luck with it,
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It sounds like we make our sourdough quite differently. We have it in a preserving jar in the fridge wth the lid on loosely. When we want to bake we bring it to room temperature, give it a feed with equal parts water and flour, usually a cup, then once its done its bubble up thing we take out what we need to bake. The recipe we use is 500g of starter, 650g flour, 350ml water and 1 tsp salt. It makes two loaves. We give what is left another feed, half a cup of flour and water, pop it back in the jar and stick it back in the fridge until next time. We’ve had this one going for nearly 7 years now.
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I think there are as many recipes and methods for sourdough as there are bakers. I like to have some flexibility with the size and number of loaves I bake, rarely the same twice, so this works for me.
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What a useful chart. Luckily I have three boys who don’t mind having sourdough pancakes if I have leftover starter!
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Wow, both of those loaves look amazing Sandra! Well done both of you… and totally admirable to find ways of reducing food waste.
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Never dreamt in a million years that Mal and I would spend time in the kitchen cooking together. It remains to be seen if it begins and ends with bread…
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Well done him!
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He does have his uses…..
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😆
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You will be able to have sourdough ‘cook-offs’! Waste not, want not. I am a big believer in using up scraps of everything as well. Nice one.
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Thanks Cheery. I’ll stand aside if he gets obsessive about making bread
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Sigh…. I really miss good bread. I haven’t yet found a good GF flour mix for regular yeasted breads, let alone one that will behave with sourdough starter. And as for making that starter… Oh well, it’s probably just as well, as if I had access to good bread I’d probably be the size of a house.
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Are you gluten intolerant? Being able to bake slow fermented 100% spelt sourdough totally upended my love/hate relationship with bread. Even GF made me sick.
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Not intolerant, full blown coeliac, so I can’t eat spelt or any other wheat variant at all, or barley, oats or rye.
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My issues are minor in comparison to coeliac disease Kate, although there are lots more food I have to avoid.
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I can provide dried sourdough starter if you find a way…..
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It would need to be started on a GF flour base…. 😦
I know it’s *possible*, but the GF ingredients tend to be cranky, expensive and variable in their results. Also, I’m lactose intolerant too, so without milk powder it’s hard to get additional protein into the bread without using heaps of soy flour, which ruins the flavour to my palate. I used to make bread a lot before the lactose issue raised its head, but no more…
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Hi Sandra, Would it be possible for you to provide your recipe for the starter please? I have never cooked with spelt either so I will be learning heaps in one go.
Katechiconi – are you able to eat finely milled nuts in cooking? To a recipe for two medium loaves of bread I add 125 grams of milled pecans or walnuts, whizzed down fine in the food processor. Makes the bread extra nutritious and moist.
Sandi
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I converted a wheat starter that was gifted to me dried. It came from another blogger. I’d be happy to send you some dried spelt starter Sandy, let me know.
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Thankyou Sandra, that would be great. I would just need to know what to do with it. I’ve only ever used yeast for breadmaking. But I love to try new ways. I’ll email my address…at Wandin East 🙂 And bring you up-to-date with some of my children’s history there, which is in answer to one of your comments a long time ago. Thankyou so much for your generosity. And I found the website you gave to Katechiconi – Cultures for Health, and downloaded the bread, baking and yogurt ebooks. My daughter-in-law will be very interested in this site too. Much appreciated.
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Send me an email Sandy, I have starter drying as we speak, should be ready to go mid week. I have instruction sheets ready to accompany the starter, I’ve gifted it to a few others who are having amazing results. Being able to bake sourdough as good as any artisan bakery in Melbourne is truly wondrous and surprisingly easy.
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Thankyou very much. I’ll send off the email tomorrow. I’m looking forward to this new experience with breadmaking.
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Thank God. I have NO aptitude for calculating and I’ve been clinging desperately to my quantities that I know work, even though I can see that I would benefit from changing them. Thank your ‘opposite’ for me, please! Both of your breads look yummy!
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My thoughts exactly re the calculating. Just shows how important it is to the world that we all different..
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