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Sourdough Discard Biscuits

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WOW - these were good! Best biscuits I’ve ever made, uses up some sourdough starter discard, and super easy as well.

Be warned, though - these are delicious for a once-in-a-while treat, but they have a LOT of butter in them, so shouldn’t be a regular feature. You will want them to be though…LOL!

This recipe is adapted from this one from King Arthur Baking Company, but modified to be proportional to the amount of discard sourdough starter you have on hand, and with some additional notes on the method I used.

Takes about 35-40 minutes from start to finish, and makes 6 biscuits per recipe.

Ingredients

NOTE: the amounts listed are PER CUP of 100% hydration sourdough starter (I.E. your starter mix should be equal proportions water and flour). If you have 2 cups of starter, double everything. The recipe scales well without modification to the proportions. ;)

  • 1 cup all-purpose flour

  • 2 teaspoons baking powder

  • 3/4 teaspoon salt

  • 1 stick / 113g unsalted butter (cold)

  • 1 TBSP milk

+1 cup of 100% hydration sourdough starter

Method

  1. Prepare a baking sheet with parchment paper and preheat your oven to 425 degrees F / 218 degrees C

  2. Combine dry ingredients

  3. Cut in butter with a pastry cutter until a crumbly texture is achieved without too-large chunks - nothing more than pea-sized, but it doesn’t have to be 100% uniform. The butter will diffuse through the biscuits as they bake.

  4. Add in sourdough starter discard and milk, and combine until a unified mass is formed

  5. Turn out onto lightly floured counter or board, and pat into a cohesive mass about 1 inch / 2.5 cm thick.

    What I actually did with my double recipe was turn it out from the bowl, gather it into a ball, roll it out to a log about 12” / 30 cm long, then pat it down flat. You want to handle it as little as possible at this stage, especially if you’re someone with warm hands like me!

  6. If you have a biscuit cutter, cut into rounds as close together as possible, gather the remaining bits together and cut again, etc. You should end up with six biscuits per recipe. If you have more, you’ve probably made your dough mass too thin.

    A biscuit cutter will give you the most uniform rise and beautiful biscuits because the cut edges separate into layers, but is not necessary. I don’t have one, so I just used a bench scraper to cut the dough mass of my double recipe into 12 equal pieces.

  7. Arrange the biscuits on the baking sheet, leaving a bit of room between them - about 1/2” / 1.25 cm. They don’t really expand much when baking (except up!), but you definitely don’t want them touching.

  8. Bake for 22-25 minutes, or until the tops of the biscuits just start to turn golden (the bottoms will be golden-brown and crispy…YUM!

  9. Remove from the oven and allow to cool on the baking sheet.


ENJOY!