Spaetzle - 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. Sour dough discared bread 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 discard sour dough cakes, cinnamon toast and even discard pancakes are not part of my diet.

Bread is part of my diet, because bread is heavenly - and that's what I choose to eat for my daily carb allowance. I am not a fan of most sweet items, so I won't waste my carbs on them. There is, however, a discard brownie recipe that I need to try out when I get a chance - but I digress...

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 used:

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.
Remove the dumplings from the water using a colander when they float to the surface.
Heat butter in a separate pot. Add the dumplings into the pot.


I posted an earlier version of this post on my blog f you have never made spätzle, I wrote a blog post "Taste of Home: Spätzle!!!" a few years ago. It contains pictures and detailed instructions.