One of the things we are trying hard to do during the Covid-19 crisis is to get our food waste down to an absolute minimum. One thing that has always bothered me with sourdough bread making is the discarding of around two-thirds of the sourdough starter during the process. We have been playing with a couple of ideas and this one certainly works and makes delicious sourdough crumpets in about 15 mins!
It is so simple – we were making a sourdough loaf and so some of the starter was used for that. Normally the next thing to do would be to throw away around two-thirds of the remaining starter (if you are just making one loaf)and feed what was left for next time. Instead of doing that we took that waste starter (around 225g) and put it into a medium size bowl, added 1 teaspoon of honey, half a teaspoon of salt and just less than half a teaspoon of baking soda and mixed gently. Immediately it rises up the bowl as a bubbling batter.
We heated a flat bottom non stick pan on a medium heat and greased 3 muffin rings and added them to the pan to heat up. The bubbling batter was then divided between the 3 rings and cooked for 5-6 mins. At this point the tops begin to set and the crumpets can be carefully removed from the rings and were flipped over to cook the tops for a further 3 mins or so until golden brown. Then simply serve as you would commercial crumpets! We served ours very simply with butter and a little smoked salmon for a light lunch. Perfect!
If you don’t want to use them straight away I am sure they would keep and could be toasted – we are yet to find out!!
If you don’t have muffin rings or something similar you could make pikelets – these are griddled ‘freeform’ and are flatter and will have fewer holes – we have yet to try these!!
These can both be cooked on the Big Green Egg when cooking something else or on a domestic hob – if you make sourdough bread – do give it a go!!
Adapted from an original recipe by PJ HAMEL
