a happy discovery … Sourdough Spätzle

I’ve been on a dumpling kick lately. A few weeks ago, I made out a bunch of Asian dumplings – pot stickers, won tons and the like – with various combinations of pork and shrimp fillings and homemade wrappers. Last week I made gnocchi, a frequent craving. In a few weeks I’ll make dozens and dozens of pierogis for my annual Polish Easter dinner. I’ve also made something simpler a few times to fill that dumpling gap – spätzle. Simple little noodle-type dumplings found in the cuisines of southern Germany and Austria, Switzerland, Hungary, Alsace, Moselle and South Tyrol. They come together with basic ingredients – flour, eggs, milk, salt, pepper – and are quickly cooked in hot water. I usually have these ingredients on hand and they’ve become a frequent meal around here.

I was playing with different shaping methods one day and posted my results on Instagram. A friend commented that there were so many ways to spätzle – “sourdough, pretzel, herbed, spiced, cut, dripped, extruded, poached, fried, confit…. bubba gump style”. She was right. There are SO MANY ways to spätzle but one of those immediately caught my attention: sourdough. What a great idea! I had been nurturing a sourdough starter and had plenty discard. A starter is just flour and water but if you’re not familiar, you have to keep feeding it to cultivate those beneficial yeasts and that involves removing a cup of the gooey mass and adding back in some flour and water to keep it going. If you do this regularly, you end up with a lot of that “discard”.  I don’t always have time to bake (or eat) a loaf of bread so I’ve been making other things – crepes, pizza, and crackers. A spätzle that uses of full cup of this stuff would be great – delicious and useful.

I found a recipe online (because of course someone has already thought of this) and with a few tweaks had a winner. I mean, little dumplings made with the regular ingredients and sautéed in butter are pretty good but the sourdough adds a really nice tang and a deeper, more interesting flavor. I just ate them out of the pan but they’d be really good with a pork roast. Plus I now have a great use for what can be an overwhelming amount of starter. This recipe uses buttermilk rather than milk and, as a buttermilk fan, I quite like the additional tang it adds (though regular milk will work too).

The batter comes together really easily but can be a bit delicate once in the cooking pot, so don’t stir right away until they have a chance to set. There are a zillion different options when it comes to shaping and it all depends on the final dumpling shape you want. I think the most common method is to use an easily available spätzle maker, which looks like a cheese grater with a hopper on top. The hopper is filled with the batter and slid back and forth to allow the batter to drip through the grater holes. I hate these things. They’re difficult to use and even more difficult to clean. They sit on top of the pot of simmering water and the batter tends to cook on the bottom of the grater from the steam, requiring frequent stopping and scraping. There are easier ways. Ditch the maker.

I think the easiest method is to put some batter on a small cutting board and use a bench scraper or a small knife to scrap bits of the batter into the simmering water. These dumplings tend to be larger, thicker and rougher shaped than other methods. They’re great sautéed but I think they’re best with a chunky, saucy stew or floating in soup.

Then there’s the potato ricer method, which achieves the same effect as the spätzle maker and is much easier, though it does take a few tries to master. (An Amazon search revealed that there are ricer contraptions specifically for forming spätzle. I did not know this.) Anyway, fill the ricer hopper about 1/3 full and press very lightly, letting the batter drip into the hot water. You don’t want to press the handle down and extrude all the batter at once or you’ll end up with a big clump of dough in the water. Rather sort of flick the ricer back and forth over the water to let the batter drip and fall in, pressing lightly to extrude more batter as needed. These spätzle will be small, thins bits in sort of a teardrop shape, maybe closer to what most people think of as a spätzle shape. I also have an Indian sev press that, though built differently, works much in the same manner as the ricer and I find it a little easier to handle (and clean).

Another way, and my particular favorite, is the pastry bag/pastry tip method. Use a ¼”-½” open round metal pastry tip fitted into a pastry bag. Fill the bag no more than halfway full and twist to close. Dip a pair of scissors in the simmering water and begin squeezing the dough, cutting ¼” pieces of batter into the water. While you can use the pastry bag without the tip, or even a just a heavy ziploc bag, what the tip does is prevent you from snipping the plastic bag along with the batter into the water. I think it’s worth a few bucks. These spätzle are small oval-round shapes, thicker than the ricer method but not as big and thick as the cutting board method. While they all sauté nicely, I think these do it best.

There are other shaping methods too – my friend’s grandmother forms them off a teaspoon and I used to work in a restaurant that cooked massive amounts using a perforated hotel pan set over a pot of water and a flexible plastic scraper to work the batter through the holes. I think there’s a Cooks Illustrated recipe out there that uses this method by creating a sort of makeshift perforated pan from a disposable aluminum pan. Experiment. Find the method that you like best and remember, you don’t need fancy tools to make these. Two simple spoons will do the trick.

Something good to know is spätzle can be made ahead. Once drained and cooled, they can be kept in the fridge for a few days or spread on a parchment lined sheet pan, frozen until solid then transferred to a Ziploc for a few months. The refrigerated batch can go right into a hot pan or into a soup. The frozen batch can be tossed directly into boiling water to defrost, drained and then cooked as usual. They’re a great thing to have tucked away for a quick meal. Spätzle batter also takes well to other flavor additions such as herbs (dill is particularly nice), spices (caraway with a rye sourdough starter is really good), mustards and I’ve been eyeing this recipe for käsenspätzle, which looks like a German version of macaroni and cheese. I mean, c’mon.

STRESS THERAPY BAKING FACTOR: DELICIOUS AND USEFUL. If you bake a lot of sourdough, you’ve inevitably had to deal with a lot of sourdough discard. It just accumulates. Sometimes, it takes over. Over the counter. Over the refrigerator. Over your life. It can be quite overwhelming if you’re not constantly baking to keep up with it so we’re all looking for ways to use it up. To be honest, a lot of the ideas out there are not that great and seemed to be designed to avoid tossing the starter in the garbage. That’s no way to deal with something you’ve cared for and nurtured. This is not one of those offhand recipes. This is good in it’s own right.

ten years ago: Khachapuri (cheesy Georgian bread)
nine years ago: Pretzel Rolls– my most popular recipe of all time
eight years ago: Guinness Stout Floats
seven years ago: Liege Sugar Waffles
six years ago: Banana Bread Bread Pudding, Lemon Tart for Sunday Lunch Polish Easter
five years ago: Guinness Crème Anglaise
four years ago: Flourless Chocolate Cookies
three years ago: Sausage Hand Pies, Potato Goat Cheese Strudel
two years ago: Marcella’s Butter Tomato Sauce, Pici(hand rolled spaghetti) – BTW, these two are outstanding together
last year: Coconut Chess Pie for Pi(e) Day

SOURDOUGH SPÄTZLE– adapted from this recipe
serves 4
This recipe calls for a “thick” sourdough starter and that may vary based on which starter recipe/method you use. Let’s just say this: the finished batter should look and feel like a thick pancake batter; thick yet a bit fluid. If yours is too thin and doesn’t form readily, add a bit more buttermilk. If too thin, add more flour. A quick tip: if using a bench scraper or scissors, dip them occasionally into the hot water to prevent the batter from sticking.

1 ¼ cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon kosher salt
½ teaspoon ground black pepper
½ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1 cup thick sourdough starter (8oz) (white, whole wheat, rye all work well)
½ cup buttermilk
3 large eggs

1. In a large bowl mix together the flour, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.
2. Add the starter and mix with a rubber spatula until well blended.
3. In a separate bowl, whisk the buttermilk and eggs together.
4. Slowly stir the milk mixture into the flour mixture until combined and smooth. The batter should have the consistency of a thick pancake batter.
5. Let the batter rest for 15 minutes.
6. Meanwhile, bring a medium pan of salted water to boil.
7. Reduce the heat to a medium-low simmer.
8. Shape the spätzle in any of the ways discussed above – cutting board, ricer, pastry bag/tip, spätzle maker – into the pot of gently simmering salted water. Do not overcrowd the pan – small batches are best.
9. Let the spätzle sit in the water for 1 minute or two and then give it a gentle stir to loosen any sticking to the bottom of the pan.
10. Once the spätzle rise to the surface, remove with a spider or slotted spoon to a strainer set over a place or bowl to catch any draining water.
11. Continue with the remaining batter.
12. At this point you can sauté the spätzle in butter (a non-stick pan works best), refrigerate for several days or spread on a parchment lined sheet pan and freeze until firm. Transfer to a Ziploc for longer freezer storage.
13. Serve the spätzle as a side dish with roasted meats and stews, in soups or just as a snack with a bit of gravy.

 

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