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These sourdough discard crackers with rosemary and parmesan are so easy to make, you’ll wonder why you haven’t made them before. Homemade crackers are an easy and delicious way to use up your sourdough discard … or you might love them so much you’ll find yourself feeding your starter extra. Just so you can make another batch. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!
Table of Contents
- Why You’ll Love This Recipe!
- Ingredients
- How to Make Sourdough Discard Crackers Recipe with Parmesan + Rosemary
- Handling The Dough
- Achieving Crisp Sourdough Crackers
- Storing & Freezing Sourdough Crackers
- Recipe Variations
- Don’t Throw Over Baked Crackers Away!
- Rosemary and Parmesan Sourdough Discard Crackers Recipe
Why You’ll Love This Recipe!
So Easy – you don’t need any special equipment for this recipe – it can be mixed by hand in minutes and you can literally mix, roll and bake (unless you want to ferment the dough).
Uses 220 grams of sourdough discard – this recipe uses quite a bit of discard so is a great way to empty your discard jar. You can easily double the recipe too!
Long Fermentation – You can place the cracker dough into the fridge for up to 12 hours before baking. This is handy if you want to prepare them in advance. You can either roll it out first or just put the balls in as they are.
Ingredients
- Sourdough Starter Discard – As you probably already know, you must discard your starter before you feed it. Discarding helps your starter to thrive and stops it from becoming too acidic. It’s advisable not to use your discard until at least day 7. Before this, the bacteria in your starter is fighting a battle of good vs evil. And you don’t want to ingest the bad bacteria. Using your discard once your starter is over 7 days old makes it much less wasteful. Plus when you can make it taste as good as these sourdough discard crackers, why would you throw it away?
- All-purpose Flour + Whole Wheat Flour – I’ve used a mix of both, but you can use only all purpose if you prefer.
- Salt
- Butter – You’ll need soft butter to make it work into the dough more easily. I’ve used salted butter.
- Parmesan Cheese – fresh, shredded Parmesan works best.
- Olive Oil – for brushing on before baking.
- Sea Salt – flaky salt is best for sprinkling on top of the sourdough discard crackers.
- Fresh Rosemary – dried rosemary is also perfectly fine, or you can substitute any other herbs you have on hand. Italian herbs, parsley and basil all work really well.
How to Make Sourdough Discard Crackers Recipe with Parmesan + Rosemary
This sourdough discard crackers recipe doesn’t get any easier. It’s a cinch to mix by hand too (although you could use a stand mixer if you want to).
You simply add the sourdough discard, flour, salt, butter and parmesan cheese to a mixing bowl. Bring the ingredients together until it forms a smooth, pliable dough. You might need to work the dough around the bowl to ensure all the flour is incorporated.
Divide the dough into two portions (this makes it easier to roll). Place each ball of dough onto a piece of parchment paper and flatten out with your hands into a rough rectangle. Sprinkle on the fresh rosemary and push it into the dough gently. Now roll out to a thin sheet of dough using a rolling pin. You want it around 1/16″ or 1.5mm thick. Thin dough equals crispy crackers.
Kate’s Pro Tip
Handling The Dough
The dough should not be sticky at all and easy to roll. If it does become sticky, simply sprinkle it with a little flour or roll it between two sheets of parchment paper. Alternatively, leave the dough in the fridge for a few hours to ferment.
Use a cracker roller to perforate dough. If you don’t have a cracker roller you can use a cookie cutter or knife to cut into crackers and then pierce each one with the tines of a fork.
Use the parchment paper to load the sourdough parmesan crackers onto 2 baking sheets and then brush dough with olive oil and sprinkle with salt. You can also sprinkle with some extra rosemary here too!
Bake at 350ºF/180ºC for around 25 minutes or until crackers are golden and crisp (you might need to adjust these bake times for your oven as some ovens run hotter or cooler). Let the crackers cool on a rack before breaking into individual pieces.
Kate’s Pro Tip
Achieving Crisp Sourdough Crackers
If your crackers aren’t crisping up the way you’d like, turn them over half way through the cooking time to ensure they cook through evenly.
Once they’re out of the oven, if there are a few crackers that are still a little soft, simply pop them back in the oven for a few minutes.
Storing & Freezing Sourdough Crackers
You can store sourdough starter crackers in an air tight container or tin for at least a week. Any longer and they can lose their crunch. You could pop them in the oven for a few minutes to refresh them.
I prefer to store them in glass jars with tight fitting lids. I love reusing old coffee jars for this purpose. These are the same jars that I built my sourdough starter in!
You can freeze baked crackers. Make sure they are completely cool before placing into a ziploc bag. They will freeze for around 2 months without losing any of their texture.
Recipe Variations
If you want to try some different flavors – you could try these suggestions:
- Sesame + Olive Oil – Add 20 grams of black sesame seeds to the dough and top with 20g of white sesame seeds instead of rosemary.
- Everything Bagel Seasoning – Instead of the rosemary and salt, top these crackers with a few spoons of homemade Everything Bagel seasoning.
- Cheddar + Pepper – Substitute the parmesan cheese with cheddar and use black or pink pepper instead of rosemary.
You might also like to try these seeded sourdough crackers or these vegan sourdough crackers. Or maybe these sourdough fruit and seed crackers or sourdough jalapeño crackers are more your style.
Kate’s Pro Tip
Don’t Throw Over Baked Crackers Away!
If you find you have some burned crackers or ones that are a little hard to use – don’t throw them away. Pop them into a food processor and turn them into sourdough cracker crumbs! Because they have yummy rosemary and parmesan in the them they will be the most amazing crumbs ever! Use these bread crumbs for breading chicken or fish (you can mix them in with other plain bread crumbs too). They also make a delicious topping on cheesy bakes like sourdough mac and cheese.
Rosemary and Parmesan Sourdough Discard Crackers
Equipment
- Digital Scales
- Mixing Bowl
- Rolling Pin
- Cracker Roller
- Baking Trays
Ingredients
- 220 g Sourdough Discard, unfed sourdough starter
- 80 g All Purpose Flour
- 50 g Whole Wheat Flour
- 5 g Salt
- 30 g Butter, soft
- 30 g Parmesan Cheese, shredded
- 20 g Olive Oil, for brushing
- 10 g Sea Salt, for topping
- Fresh Rosemary
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 180ºC (350ºF).
- Add sourdough discard, flour, soft butter, salt and parmesan to a mixing bowl and bring the ingredients together to form a pliable dough (see notes).
- Divide the dough into two portions (this makes it easier to roll).
- Place each ball onto a piece of parchment paper and flatten out with your hands into a rough rectangle.
- Sprinkle on the rosemary and push it into the dough gently.
- Now roll out to a thin sheet of dough using a rolling pin. You want it around 1/16" or 1.5mm thick. The thinner you can get it the better because thick crackers won't cook properly and won't crisp up in the oven.The dough should not be sticky at all and easy to roll – however see notes below for some troubleshooting if your dough is sticky.
- Use a cracker roller to perforate dough. If you don't have a cracker roller you can use a cookie cutter or knife to cut into crackers and then pierce each one with the tines of a fork.
- Place each parchment paper with dough on top onto a baking sheet. This recipe will generally need two baking trays.
- Brush dough with olive oil and sprinkle with salt.
- Bake at 180ºC (350ºF) for around 25 minutes or until crackers are golden and crisp.
- Let the crackers cool on a rack before breaking into individual pieces.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
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This is a brilliant recipe! Easy. Simple and so darn tasty. Defo let a keeper! Thank you for sharing
These are delicious, and I will with slight modifications:
First am I the only one who would never have 220 g of discard? I had to make a levain to get there. Grate the cheese first. And I omitted the salt bc with parmesan and then w/ sea salt sprinkled on top it’s plenty salty enough.
The dough is of course sticky, because 220 g starter plus the butter, and only 130 of flour = sticky dough every time. No problem though – in the fridge for a bit where the flavors meld nicely.
After rolling cracker dough, rolling shapes, adding oil and salt, I poked holes all over w/ fork so those 220g of levain won’t make big bubbles here and there.
I used everything bagel seeds instead of rosemary as I was out, and sprinkled sesame seeds on top before bake along w/ the sea salt. Cause I can never get enough of sesame.
These are delish. I’m about to make 220g of discard to make another batch!!
Thank you Pantry Mama
SO delicious and EASY! I will make these with all of my discard so I can try lots of varieties!! Thank you Pantry Mama!
I’ve just made a batch which taste wonderful but are slightly “chewy”. Is this how they should be? I used 80 gms of all purpose flour as per recipe but substituted whole wheat flour with a mix of plain spelt and dark rye. Could that be the issue I wonder? I also upped the cheese to 50gms.
Do I need to use wheat flour? I have bread and all purpose on hand.
This is the first time a discard cracker recipe has turned out GREAT for me. NO waiting around for dough to rest and no rolling either. Perfect for using up discard with minimal effort! I used all whole wheat and vegetable oil. Still great!
These crackers are amazing!!! I put Everything Bagel with jalapeño bits in my crackers and they are soooo delicious !! I make a double batch every few days!
Did these need to be refrigerated after they’re made since they have Parmesan cheese in it? My concern is that refrigerating them will make them lose their crispiness.
It’s a great recipe! Thank you so much.
Definitely don’t need to be refrigerated. I’ve kept them over a month with no problems. Storing in a cookie tin or glass jar is best so they stay crisp 🙂 Enjoy xo
Thanks for million for this recipe.
It’s the best recipe with sourdough discard. I don’t want to feed twice a day, because I don’t like to throw away the food. But now I return to feed my starter because you gave the Best recipe. I keep all discards for this cracker
Thanks
I don’t always have time to made items with the discard. The prep on this took less than 15 minutes. My family was giving me a hard time as I rolled them out. They were joking that I should make star shapes or goldfish, etc. I cut them with a pizza roller and poked them with a fork. They were gone within a few minutes of cooling. I will not be making shapes next time either, but I will definitely be making these again! Thanks for an easy recipe.
I have made these crackers many times and they are a big hit each time. I use an abundance of dried rosemary.
This is the first time I tried this style of SD discard crackers, (adding extra flour to the discard). I added in about 1 Tbl of Bohemian Forest herb blend we get from Savory Spice, left the dough balls in the fridge over night, rolled them out to 1/16″, painted with some olive oil, sprinkled with salt flakes. With the oven set to 350°F. I had to baked them 40 mins to get them to cook through. They are very good. Because of the extra flour, they have more substance. I’ll try other variations next.
Made these for the first time. I’m pretty pleased with how they turned out but if I do it again I would cut the amount of salt in half, or skip the application of on top before baking. To me they are too salty. With cheese they may be fine though! I bought a cracker roller to do these and that’s a handy tool! And I didn’t have any fresh rosemary, used dry instead. Next time I will hunt down some fresh.
I used All purpose Einkorn Flour for the 130 grams of flour needed. I also added the olive oil into the dough mixture. On the top of the cracker I used Dried Rosemary and Oregano, no extra salt.
They came out great. I think next time I will leave the dough refrigerated over night to increase the health benefits of a longer ferment.
Thanks for a great recipe.
Amazing cracker recipe. First time I have tried to make crackers and they came out perfect! 😊
Thank you for sharing.
Excellent recipe, Easy to make! And definitely used a lot of my discard thank goodness. Thank you for all you do to help all of us in our sourdough journey!
Is there any way to make these without the discard? I know that’s the whole point, but they are so popular that I don’t have enough discard to keep up with demand! I’m pretty sure my starter is 100% high duration with equal parts water and flour, so maybe I split the 220g of discard into 110g water and 110g more flour?
I make a double batch of these almost every week. I use freshly shredded Parmesan and Asiago, Italian herbs and sesame seeds. Outstanding!
I’m making a batch today with Asiago. Looking forward to them!
These are so great, I make them weekly. Love that we can eat home made crackers.
Excellent recipe!