Sourdough Crepes with Salmon and Avocado

Smoked salmon and avocado is a wonderful combination, not only because both are nutritional powerhouses of healthy fats and vitamins (A, D, K and E), but because they complement each other so well in flavour and texture – salty strong smoked salmon is hugged and mellowed by creamy and earthy avocado.

If you have sourdough living in your fridge, this is a good way to use up the excess whenever you have to “feed” it but don’t want to bake bread.

Sourdough bacteria pre-digest flour for us by breaking down gluten into amino-acids, which makes any pancakes, crepes or bread made using traditional sourdough method much more friendly for our gut. Sourdough also imparts pleasant complex and slightly sour flavour. We mill Einkorn flour for almost everything we bake, but shop-bought spelt or even wheat flour can also be used. Einkorn, being the most ancient wheat variety, has not being through hundreds of years of hybridisation and is more digestible for us even if its not fermented. It also tastes delicious – nutty and fragrant.

If you don’t have a sourdough starter, you can make your usual crepes and just use our topping ideas. You can also make soaked crepe batter by mixing flour and sour milk, or kefir or a mixture of yogurt and water and leaving the mixture overnight, then adding a couple of eggs in the morning. Soaking will make any grain flour more digestible. Or you can make a exciting experiment of creating your own sourdough starter – links to gluten-free and wheat sourdough starters at the end of the post!

For the crepes you will need:

50 ml sourdough starter from the fridge
200 g flour
200 g water
2 eggs
1/2 cup cooked chopped and drained spinach (optional – to make green crepes)
salt
milk

For the filling:

smoked salmon (we prefer organic)
1 avocado
herbs – dill, coriander or any other soft leaf herb you prefer
1/2 red onion or 1 spring onion

The night before you want to make crepes:

Take out your starter from the fridge and add 200 g flour and 200 g water (or more for more crepes, but equal amounts of flour and water).
Leave at room temperature covered until bubbles appear, 7 hours or more – I’ve left it for 20 hours at times – it just gets slightly more sour, which we find pleasant.

When you are ready to make crepes (7-20 hours later):

Take out 50 ml of this now large volume of starter and put it back in the fridge.
This is a very important step, you want your starter to continue to live in your fridge. If you add your eggs, like I once did at 6 am in the morning, being half asleep – thats it, you have to get a new starter from somewhere.
I often put a little post-it note somewhere near the dough to remember to put those 50 ml in the fridge in the morning.

Add 2 eggs, salt and milk to the rest of your starter until you have a consistency of a normal crepe batter (like a smoothie). If its too thick – the crepes will be thicker, so no big deal, you might even prefer them that way if you’d like to spread butter on them instead of rolling them into rolls with filling.

Pour batter with a soup ladle onto a preheated frying pan (I use – and love- this De Buyer pan). Start from one end of the pan and then tilt the pan in all directions so that the batter covers the bottom evenly.
Flip when set on top.

Bubbling starter, frying the plain crepes and a stack of spinach ones

Once you have your stack of crepes, you can start filling them with whatever you like.

We like mashed up avocado (with a bit of salt and lemon juice), smoked salmon, red onions, coriander or parsley and dill. Spread the mashed avocado first on the most of the crepe, than layer other ingredients taking care to spread fairly evenly so that the crepe would roll up nicely. Roll and eat or refrigerate for later use – it cuts very neatly when cooled. A perfect portable breakfast, lunch or snack is ready!

Salmon, avocado, onion and herbs on a sourdough crepe

You can also cut the cooled rolled crepes into 2 cm rounds and serve as a cocktail canapé.

Just salmon as the filling works wonderfully too. Ham, thinly cut roasts, patés, cheese – anything that is flexible enough to roll into a crepe will work. Experiment and let your kiddos choose the toppings. Recently we have done chicken, avocado and mayonnaise – I rolled them up slightly differently, Russian style, into small parcels. And that, my friends, is as portable as it gets – no extra wrapping needed!

Chicken & avocado crepes

If you are curious to experience the amazing sourdough, here is how to make a your own sourdough starter using flour, water and wild friendly yeasts that are lurking all around us:

THE basic recipe if you are not gluten-free:

How to make a sourdough starter

Exciting options if you are gluten-free:

DIY GLUTEN-FREE SOURDOUGH STARTER

How to Make a Gluten Free Quinoa Sourdough Starter

Gluten-Free Garlic & Herb Sourdough Crackers (starter instructions at the end)