Never throw out your Starter again! Save any extra you have and put it in a sealed jar in the fridge. There are lots of ways to use it up. One thing that used to bother me when I started working with Sourdough was the amount of wasted flour I was ending up with. Each time I fed my starter I was throwing away the majority of the mix! As I learned more about sourdough baking I began to find recipes that used the old discarded starter. It was a game changer. The most common ones are Pancakes and Waffles, and they are pretty incredible! I am a big fan of those for sure, but my favourite things to make with old starter are Sourdough Crackers. They are delicious, super easy to make, and they last a long time (if you can stop yourself from eating them all at once!) The other nice thing is that you can make up extra dough and keep it in the fridge for a couple weeks before using it.
Ingredients
300g Sourdough Starter from the fridge
150g Whole Wheat Flour
30g Softened Butter
15g Olive Oil
1/2 tsp Salt (~3g)
Pepper and any other spices/herbs you want
Process
Mix all ingredients in a large bowl by hand. Sometimes I dump out the mixture on the counter to knead everything together, but anything works, just get it all incorporated.
Divide the dough in half and roughly flatten into squares or rectangles.
Wrap the dough in plastic or place in an airtight container and let it rest in the fridge for 20 minutes or up to 2 weeks. Or, if the dough is still pretty cold (because you used cold starter) go ahead and get ready to roll.
Pre-heat oven to 450°F (I usually do 450°F convection but it is fine either way).
Liberally dust some parchment paper and both sides of your dough block with flour.
Roll out the dough until it is very thin (1/16"-1/8" or about 2-3mm).
Cut the dough (I use a pizza cutter) into any sizes or shapes you want and sprinkle with salt and pepper.
Optional: With a fork poke holes in each cracker so that they won't puff up. My son LOVES when they do puff up and these are now referred to as "Pillows" here. I'm converted too now, we always have "pillows" instead of crackers.
Bake for 15-17minutes or until a nice golden/dark brown. You don't want soft crackers. You may need to start pulling some out before others if they are not baking evenly. The ones on the perimeter will probably be done before the middle.
Notes:
This recipes makes 2 trays of crackers, about 250g per tray.
I almost always use 100% whole wheat flour, since my starter is usually 75% white it works out to be a nice ratio. Any flour will work. Play around with the amount of flour you want. It is very flexible.
It is a very easy recipe to scale up or down. Use as much starter as you have and then use half as much flour (ex. if you have 450g of starter use 225g of flour and then 45g of butter and 22.5g of oil). Feel free to add any herbs and spices you would like and let me know what you try!