I mess around with sourdough from time to time. In fact, if you go a few years back on my blog, there's an entire series of posts from my getting creative with sourdough discard phase. Sourdough is my favorite kind of bread, and I absolutely adore anything made with the starter discard, but for the last eighteen months or so I haven't tended a starter. You know, because I was just a little bit ill and stuff.
But, I am feeling much better, awesome in fact, and my most excellent pal @jacobtothe asked if anyone wanted a bit of his sourdough starter.
ME! I did!
You see, tending a sourdough starter daily is a bit like tending a hungry toddler. It likes the right temperature, is always hungry, and more than a bit demanding. That said, this time I am going to just keep the beast in the fridge and feed it once a week or so, because I am not in the mood to deal with it daily right now. It's summer, I am farming and professionally baking, and it's too dang hot to bake at home on some days.
Okay, that's a lie, I pretty much bake every day, I am just up at dawn when I do it.
Explanatory blathering aside, that is how I ended up with Buford yesterday. JT and I were going to see each other at the local library protest, as I was dropping off cookies as a gesture of support and love to the librarians and he was there with extra protest supplies and liquid refreshment for the protestors. He passed me the small glass jar with the starter in it, and I might have let out an audible squee.
And yes, I named my starter. It's a living thing! Buford has that lovely fermented smell and for some reason I got the image of a gym bro who was always after them gains when I took in its scent. Plus, it looks cool in my phone to see a weekly alert to feed Buford.
Last night I fed Buford and this morning I of course was going to do something with the discard. But first I fed Buford again, let him sit on the counter a couple hours, and then plunked him in the fridge to chill until next week's feeding. Good times.
As I haven't baked something with discard for awhile, I perused the interwebs for a recipe. I wanted to make my hubs some cookies with some dang nuts in them, and since I had some pecans on the shelf, I ended up making this recipe with some added pecans.
Apparently they are pretty yummy! One interesting part of the recipe was that you shape the dough and place it in the fridge for a minimum of 1 hour and up to 24 hours before baking to let things ferment a bit more. I like it!
I served the hubs three fresh from the oven sourdough discard chocolate chip pecan cookies on a little plate. He didn't make a lot of noise, other than a contented grunt, so I know they are edible.
Something that I always do with my chocolate chip cookies, no matter the recipe, is that I roll the balls of dough in sugar before I bake them. It dresses the cookies up a bit and gives them this tasty little sugar crust that really makes the overall cookie ingesting experience even more enjoyable.
And that cookie recipe makes a ton, which was another reason I whipped it up, because I am going to freeze most of the cookies for the fam to be able to grab out of the freezer if a snack is required.
Because honestly, if I leave them all out they will just disappear in a flash. Even though they are all ferment-y and maybe somewhat healthy, ingesting that many cookies in that short of a time frame can't be at all good for one's carcass.
Of course, they probably won't last long in the freezer too, but one can at least try 😉