Easy Sourdough Recipes Galore: English Muffins, Crackers, Pizza Crust, Pancakes, and Waffles!

Are you looking for easy sourdough recipes?

• Sourdough waffles
• Sourdough pizza crust
• Sourdough pancakes
• Sourdough crackers
• Sourdough English muffins

Thanks to Lucinda, a friend from our local WAPF chapter, I've got all the goods for you today!

I haven't tried all of these recipes, but Lucinda brought her sourdough crackers to the demonstration meeting, and they're better than ANY cracker I've ever eaten, seriously.  They're tasty, thin, and crispy, but still hold up when you use it as a dipper.  (Doesn't it drive you crazy to dip a cracker and have it break apart?)

First, click here if you want the entire BEST sourdough bread recipe and if you want to learn why sourdough truly is the healthiest bread there is.  (This is not only according to Rami Nagel, author of Cure Tooth Decay, because many others agree, including the WAPF.)

Note that there are a lot of links below so you know exactly what ingredients and equipment to get to make the process easier, and so you know where you can find them, many of which are affiliate links.  My own notes below are in italics.

To begin, get some active sourdough starter from a friend, or click here to start one yourself using this packet of sourdough starter.  For more about which one to use, see Lucinda's comments at the original post.

*All recipes call for starter that has been fed and risen to double.

Easy Sourdough Recipes

Quick-view Sourdough Shopping:

Sourdough Baking Equipment

Not all of these are absolutely necessary, but they make things easier…

1. Brotform basket for proofing
2. Parchment paper, unbleached
3. Pizza baking stone
4. Stainless steel cookie pans with no edges for slipping off the pan easily
5. Baking peel for slipping the dough off pans easily
6. Long oven mitts
7. Baker's Couche—flax cloth for folding dough or proofing oblong loaves
8. 5 quart cast iron Dutch Oven with lid
9. Flour storage containers – Lucinda uses 5 – 10 gallon tubs with lids
10. Kitchen scale—flour measurements are most accurate when weighed
11. Non-reactive Bread Bowl—can be glass, ceramic, or wood (no metal bowls)
12. Sturdy wooden spoon—best to have a thick handle as this bread dough can be hard to stir
13. 1 quart wide mouth glass jar with plastic lids for starter
14. Cooling racks

Sourdough Baking Ingredients (I copied the info from above to make it easy to find here.)

1. Sourdough starter from a friend or click here to start one yourself using this packet of sourdough starter.
2. Well or spring water—faucet or room temp, NON-chlorinated water.  If you use reverse osmosis water like we do (to remove Fluoride, chlorine, pharmaceutical residue, pesticide toxins, etc.), then Lucinda said to just add some mineral drops to it like these Concentrace drops.  This may be why my sourdough bread hasn't been successful in the past, because I was using dead RO water!  (By the way, if we had it to do over, we'd buy this water filtering system instead.  You can read more about water filtering here.)
3. Whole wheat flour, freshly ground if possible, but you may want to sift out big pieces of the bran.  Lucinda uses whole wheat, which you can get here, but I like using alternative grains when I can, such as spelt.  She said this is fine, but it may take a little more, go by how it feels.  (She said not to use Rye, though, as she hasn't had good luck with it.  Which is too bad since according to Rami in this article, that's the best grain to use in sourdough to break down the most anti-nutrients…)  I'm growing my starter now with spelt, so I'll keep you posted.  Spelt is another type of wheat, but more traditional and tends to not cause problems in some who are sensitive to regular wheat.  Although, the sourdough process itself helps minimize those issues as well, as mentioned above.  Read more about using alternative grains here.  If you're not planning to grind it fresh, you can get whole spelt flour here.  If you DO plan to grind it yourself, you can get spelt berries here or try the einkorn berries here.  And here's the grain mill I use and more about why I love this one.   (Is that enough links for you?!)  Remember I haven’t done this successfully yet, so you may want to follow Lucinda’s instructions exactly to be sure you’ll have good luck!
4. Unbleached, un-enriched all-purpose white flour – Lucinda uses Natural Way Mills Gold n White Flour—available from Country Life www.clnf.org and UNFI www.unfi.com, or click here for the kind I use.  You could also try this einkorn all-purpose flour.
5. Finely ground sea salt

Thanks for these recipes, Lucinda!

I asked Lucinda to tell us a little about herself:

I grew up baking yeast bread starting from as far back as I can remember.  I was blessed to grow up in a family that believed in making their own food.  We lived on a farm and even had our own milk cow.  When I was a little older, we moved to Togo, West Africa, where I got to eat wonderful European style artisan breads baked in clay ovens.  I also got to do a lot of experimenting with making different types of yeast bread.  I started playing with sourdough recipes in the late 90's after falling in love with the sourdough bread from Zingerman's Bakery.  My bread was ok, but it never had that chewy crumb I wanted.  Later in the early 2000's I tried again for a couple of years, but no matter what I did, the bread still wasn't right.  Finally early last year, I decided to get some starter from a friend and try again, this time with a no-knead version.  Finally the bread had the chewy crumb I was after!  I spent the last year and a half experimenting with the recipe to get the bread I have today.