Spätzle - made with sour dough discard (updated)

Anyone who maintains a sour dough starter knows that, with sour dough starter comes sour dough discard... What to do with the discard? 

Initially I would bake discard bread.  Those recipes simply use a little bit of starter in a more or less regular bread recipe made with instant yeast.  But there is only so much bread any one person wants to eat - even a German person; and my freezer also has limited capacity.  What to do with the discard?

The Internet is a beautiful place.  King Arthur has a whole collection of discard recipes.  Unfortunately, I am a recovering diabetic, so the cakes, cinnamon toast and even pancakes are not part of my diet. 

Bread is part of my diet despite the carbohybrates, because bread is heavenly.  Bread is what I choose to eat as my carbs for the day.

Recently, I found another beautiful place on the Internet - a Facebook group "Perfect Sour dough" where people talk about - what else - sour dough.  Someone there mentioned that you could make noodles with sour dough.  This is how I had the idea to make German noodles - spätzle - with sour dough discard.

Here is the recipe I'm going to use:

Spätzle (German noodles)

350 g flour 

50 g sour dough discard

4 eggs

1 tsp salt

12 TBsp water (200 ml) - adjust to desired consistency

50 g butter

The flour/sour dough ratio can probably be adjusted to your taste, but this is what I used.  With the eggs in the mix, I imagine that not much of the final hold comes from the gluten.

Mix flour, sour dough, eggs, salt and water into a dough. 

Push the resulting mixture through a ricer into boiling salt water.  

Fish the dumplings out of the water using a colander. 

Heat butter in a separate pot.  Add the dumplings into the pot.

If you have never made spätzle, I wrote a blog post "Taste of Home: Spätzle!!!" a few years ago.  It contains pictures and detailed instructions.  

Sour dough bread for the rest of us - or - Relax! It's gonna be OK.

Sour dough bread for the rest of us - or - Relax! It's gonna be OK.

Sour dough bread has always intimidated me.  The initial set-up, the feeding, the measuring, the timing, the commitment ... Maintaining a sour dough is like having a pet - and I'm not good with pets that don't remind me that they would like to be fed.  A sour dough was not likely to survive in my life.

But then, a few years ago, I set up a sour dough starter with the help of my adopted son. Truth be told, I did it primarily to entertain said son, but it has become a part of my life since then. In the beginning, for a few days - maybe even weeks, I obsessed over it, measured, fed, kept notes... but then, when I realized that this thing was doing just fine, I relaxed a bit.

Sour dough bread, it turns out, only sounds intimidating.  Once you get over the fear, it's really simple - and both the maintenance of the sour dough and the bread baking can be adjusted to work for the schedule of regular working folks.