Yes, you can use sourdough discard —as-is, with no feedings, and make sourdough bread with it.
Yes you heard that right, no feedings at all, straight up un-fed sourdough starter.
You can use that and mix that right in with your dough ingredients and bake sourdough bread with it.
BUT HOW?!
Well, the dough ingredients is just one gigantic feeding —just at a different feeding ratio
And when the dough (that is really a gigantic sourdough starter, when you really think about it) reaches almost double, you bake it and it becomes sourdough bread.
What’s the catch?
Here’s what you need to know…
- Resulting sourdough bread can be too sour
- it’s not best practice
- generally not for sourdough beginners
- fermentation time is unpredictable
Let’s take this recipe for example:
Country Sourdough Bread RECIPE
- 360g water (72% hydration)
- 100g starter (20% starter)
- 400g white bread flour
- 100g whole wheat bread flour
- 10g salt
You are essentially feeding the sourdough discard the dough ingredients and will wait for it to come to peak to bake. This is TRUE whether you use the starter at peak or not at peak.
If you had used a starter at peak, then the fermentation timeline is predictable because it’s what you’re used to doing.
But if you use the starter when it’s not at peak, or when it’s not fed, then the fermentation is MUCH MUCH longer.
You can either
- Extend bulk proof
- Extend cold proof
- Extend both bulk and cold proof
For how long?
Who knows?! Depends on how long ago your starter was fed.
You very much have to go by feeling the dough —and this is why I said this is not for beginners.
That’s why this is not best practice. It’s just too unpredictable.
But it IS possible and many bakers have done it —but probably only seasoned sourdough bakers who know how fermented the dough is just by feeling it.
If you’re going to go through all this trouble, you might as well have just fed the starter again and waited for it to come to peak to use it.
You probably would’ve baked sourdough bread sooner.