Crunchy Sourdough Starter Discard Biscotti Recipe (2024)

Contents

Do you have a sourdough starter that you are feeding everyday or every week? I do! Every time I feed my starter, I try to find recipes that include the sourdough discard so I am not wasting all that flour. So far, I have made rosemary sourdough crackers, peanut butter sourdough cookies, sourdough pancakes, double chocolate sourdough waffles and most recently almond sourdough biscotti. You can probably find a lot of sourdough recipes on crackers, cookies and pancakes, but biscotti, not so much. Plus the biscotti recipes I found typically use a 50% hydration sourdough starter, which means I have to convert my 100% hydration sourdough starter first to a 50% starter before I can make my biscotti. So in the end, I decided to make my own biscotti recipe using my 100% sourdough starter. It involved studying numerous basic biscotti recipes and calculating flour to water ratios to incorporate my sourdough starter discard. I was worried about how it will turn out but, it is so good that if there’s a biscotti contest, it will easily win top 3 (and nobody would even be able to guess that it’s made with sourdough starter discard!).

Can you use any type of sourdough starter?

Absolutely, as long as it’s a 100% hydration sourdough starter. 100% hydration just means it’s 1 to 1 ratio of flour to water. Your 100% hydration starter can be made with any type of flour. My sourdough starter is made with rye, all purpose flour and water. When I feed it, usually once a week (I take it out of the fridge and leave it to rest in room temperature for 2 hours before I feed it), I use 50g organic rye flour and 50g all purpose flour with 100g room temperature filtered water. The amount of starter that I actually keep for feeding is around 25g, which means I discard around 200g matured starter each time.

How do you store the biscotti fresh?

After the biscotti are completely cooled, I like to store them in a sealed glass container. They can be kept up to a month! If they turn soft, there’s an amazing trick. Simply turn the oven to 250°F, pop in the biscotti for 15 min and turn off the oven, leaving the biscotti in the oven to cool down slowly. They will taste just the same if not better with a more concentrated flavor.

Can you add other dried fruits and nuts?

You can add any kind of fruits and nuts that you like. I recommend a maximum of 2 cups of fruits and nuts mix. When you have too much fruits and nut, it will be hard to keep the dough together, especially when you slice the dough for your second bake.

Almond Sourdough Starter Discard Biscotti

Level: (easy to hard)

Yield: 22-24 biscotti

Ingredients:

Dry Ingredients

2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup almond flour (you can substitute with all purpose flour instead)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon orange zest (one whole orange, or one whole lemon)
1 1/2 cup toasted almonds

Wet Ingredients

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350°F degrees
Mix all the dry ingredients in a large bowl
In a separate bowl, cream together all wet ingredients except for the sourdough starter discard
Stir in the sourdough starter discard in the wet mixture
Combine all the dry and wet mixtures until blended. Do not overwork the dough otherwise gluten will develop and make the biscotti chewy
Divide the dough into 2
Roll each dough into 10″ long and 4″ wide rectangle (roughly 1 1/2″ thick)
Line the baking sheet with parchment paper and bake for 30-35 min until lightly golden
Let cool for 10 minutes and then cut into 1″ thick wedges
Turn the wedges on the side for second bake
Reduce the oven heat to 325°F degrees and bake the wedges for another 15-18 min until golden brown on the edges
Let cool completely before storing them in an airtight container

Baking it for the third time really sealed the flavors and make them very crispy. If you like crunchy snacks like these biscotti, you will like my crunchy vanilla almond granola. Or if you are using your sourdough to make some pizza dough, here’s a fun twist to using your pizza dough.