Discard Sourdough Salt Dough!!
I have quietly been working on this for a couple of days now, not-so-patiently waiting to share this idea! In all my searching for what to do with discard SD starter, I have never come across this before…
Why not use up unfed or ‘discard’ sourdough starter to make salt dough? Incorporating my love of baking with my love of crafting (and a very strong discomfort with wasting perfectly good flour…).
The usual (non sourdough) salt dough recipe is:
1 cup flour
1/2 cup salt
1/2 – 1 cup water (enough to make a workable dough)
Roll out, etc. then bake at 200F for 2 hours or until dry. This can also be air dried, but it will take a few days.
My sourdough starter is currently 1:1 flour and water, so it was just a matter of adjusting quantities. I am getting low on all purpose, so I used whole wheat LOL. Um, it’s decoration – yeah, that’s it.
I’m going to guess that this salt dough, if left to ‘rise’ might be capable of making interesting puffy shapes. But I didn’t wait to find out.
It’s a pretty simple recipe, so I just eyeballed it. I rolled a ball and started rolling it out to about 1/4″ thickness. You can roll this stuff thinner or thicker if you like.
It is pretty easy to work with and stays workable a very long time.
I used stamps to make a few designs, I didn’t use ink, but it would work if you wanted to ink your stamp first. Then I cut them into shapes with a knife and arranged them on a baking sheet.
I then used a chopstick to make holes through them so I could hang them later.
I also inserted wire in the edge of one.
After baking at 200F for 2.5 hours, they were dried through.
I sanded the edges and then used my lace kemper tool
I painted them using nail polish. I experimented with a few things and watercolor worked pretty nicely as well, but I really like the coverage and bold color I got with the polish. It also adds a nice lacquered look.
They could be coated with polyurethane at this point to waterproof them, but I wasn’t interested in that for this project.
I used hot glue to attach felt on the back side of a few pieces and used jump rings in others.
I wired a bunch together as a wall hanger, and added a keyring with a latch on a felted heart. (The heart is going to be clipped on my purse.)
I still have quite a few to paint and use somewhere!
I decided to curl the wires by wrapping them around a chop stick.
What do you think?
posted by Petra on June 24, 2015
I really like the wall decor and the key ring! Great ideas!
posted by YogurtHydro on June 27, 2015
Thanks Petra.:)
posted by Linda Manns Linneman on July 13, 2015
This is so neat. What a fun project. Your work turned out great. Thank you so much for sharing
posted by YogurtHydro on July 24, 2015
I loved this stuff when I was a kid, I hadn’t used salt dough in years – it is still fun.:)