Our favorite Non-Bread sourdough recipes

Life goes on, and I continue to find delicious things to make with my sourdough starter.

The problem is, there are only two of us, and we only eat so much bread. We have taken what opportunities we can to give food away to people. The problem is, we're still really new here and we just plain don't know that many people to give stuff to.

The good news is, sourdough starter isn't only good for bread! These are a few things I tried making that were not bread, and they turned out amazing. I will definitely be re-visiting these recipes in the future.

Sourdough batter for Fish 'n Chips or Onion Rings

My inspiration was found here: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/12550/sourdough-onion-rings

The first time I tried this I made home made Fish 'n Chips and, man, were they good. Then just the other day, I made home made onion rings. They were amazing, again.

I made one major change to the recipe as given in the link above. (Well, aside from not really measuring anything, but then again, I hardly ever do.) I did not use soda water in my batter. It's just not something I keep around, and not something I wanted to buy just for one recipe. Instead, I thinned out the starter with water until it looked about the consistency of cake batter and threw in a tiny bit of baking soda. The batter fried up beautifully, it was fluffy and crunchy and amazing.

In fact, it was so amazing that neither time that I used this recipe did I pause long enough between bites to snap a picture of the food. But this is definitely something I'll be trying again, so maybe next time.

Another fun thing we did with our onion rings was do a sort of mix-your-own-sauce buffet. We got out everything in the fridge or cupboards that might taste nice and mixed up our own sauce. Mine was mostly ketchup, with some Worcestershire sause, lemon juice, seasoned salt, and a dash of cayenne. Mr. Perkins did ketchup and mayonnaise with Worcestershire sauce and Creole seasoning. We both thought ours was the best. 

Sourdough Beignets

I first tried beignets when my parents brought a mix home after a trip to New Orleans. They're in the same family as Utah/Mormon Scones, Navajo Fry Bread, or Fried Dough. The main thing that sets beignets apart would be that they have a little bit more sugar, and therefore get a little bit more brown when you fry them.

Nobody would be surprised to know that I have been finding ALL the delicious-looking sourdough recipes I can recently. I stumbled across the Sourdough Surprises blog, which gives bakers a category to make something each month with their starter. This month it was beignets.

Take a look at these beauties. And believe you me, they tasted as good as they looked. Instead of the classic powdered sugar, we topped them with coconut creme (our new favorite sweet topping) and didn't feel bad about it one bit. 

I got my recipe from here: http://benstarr.com/recipes/sourdough-beignets/

And good news for you non-sourdough people out there--it also gives instructions for making them without a starter, if you wish. They won't have the sourdough tang, but they'll still be dang good.

Sourdough Brownies

Rich, sweet, and tangy. Soooooo good.

This is where I got my recipe: http://www.wildyeastblog.com/sourdough-brownies/

I didn't have bittersweet chocolate, so I used milk chocolate and reduced the sugar. It turned out just great.

And yes, the recipe uses grams instead of cups.

So if you really want to try them I can tell you this much: most chocolate packages will have grams right next to the ounces. My package of chocolate chips was 326 grams, so I ended up using most of the package. 2 cubes of butter weighed in at just under 226 grams (no wonder these were so rich ;-), so I added a little scoop of coconut oil to make up the difference, which probably wasn't even necessary. There are online calculators that can help you to convert the measurements of the other ingredients.

So there you have it. Our favorite non-bread sourdough recipes.

Meanwhile, there are still only just two of us, and I still bake a whole lot of bread with my starter. So I'm now looking for recipes using old bread or breadcrumbs, and I'll do a roundup of those when I've found some I like.