By Permacoach, Meg McGowan
My new favourite thing to do with excess sourdough starter: make pasta!
Last week my lovely daughter introduced me to a brand of pasta made with sourdough starter. It was delicious, especially because of the slight tang that sourdough adds to everything.
I don’t discard any starter because I hate waste. I just keep feeding my starter up and I usually use the whole lot to make a loaf, keeping just a little bit back for the next one. I don’t bake every day so sometimes things get crazy and I make crackers, pizza bases, crumpets or pancakes.
This time around I added some nutritional yeast and chia seed to the starter along with a good glug of olive oil and a couple of eggs. I also accidentally added salt which is a no-no for pasta but it doesn’t seem to have done any harm. Then I just kept kneading in flour until I had a good stiff dough.
My trusty hand-cranked pasta machine had a good workout and dinner last night was super silky hand made fettuccine with a sauce made from leeks, white wine, an egg, peas and left over cream and cheese bits from weekend entertaining (never toss out those cheese board remnants!). Yum!
The rest of the pasta has been divided into single serve portions (150g) and will be frozen for future use. Storing it in single portions also helps to reduce food waste because I can cook exactly as much as I need.
Pasta making takes a good chunk of time and energy, but the result can give you a lot of quick, low energy meals and if you pimp the ingredients you can massively improve the nutritional value. Most commercial pasta is just flour and water.
Energy is everything and everything is energy
Produce no waste
