Use your Starter for Sourdough Muffins

Anytime I need to feed our sourdough starter here at The Chopping Block, I’m overcome with the urge to bake something! I saved some discard from the feeding and decided to try something different. We make muffins at home about once a week for our daughter, so this was a good opportunity to try some sourdough muffins! 

If you have a starter that you keep maintained, there are tons of sweet options to make besides just breads, I like making sourdough waffles, and I’ve even seen recipes for brownies and cookies! There are lots of places it can be incorporated. My daughter Willa loves strawberries, and I happened to have some frozen. I did make an initial batch from an online recipe but wasn’t entirely thrilled with the outcome so I made my own adjustments to the recipe. The muffins needed more moisture, tang (which is what I’d hope to get from the sourdough) and could have been sweeter. They also needed more strawberries! 

I increased the liquid by about a half cup using the juices from the defrosted strawberries and used twice as many berries. If your starter is ripe, you may get good acidity but just to add some zip, I put in some whole fat Greek yogurt. To bump up the sweetness as well as a little additional mouthfeel, I added some maple syrup. I even speckled the tops of the muffins with brown sugar before baking. Adjusting a baking recipe isn’t always as easy as adjusting a regular savory recipe because you typically have to pay close attention to ratios and moisture levels. Trial and error always leads to the best recipes! 

Strawberry Sourdough Muffins

Yield: 12 large muffins 

Prep time: 20 minutes 

Cook time: 15-20 minutes 

1/2 cup butter, melted

3/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup maple syrup 

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste

1/2 cup milk

1/2 cup juice from defrosted strawberries 

1/2 cup Greek yogurt 

1 cup sourdough discard

2 cups cake flour or AP flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon Chinese five spice

1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom 

3 cups frozen strawberries, thawed and juice reserved

2 tablespoons flour

1. Preheat the oven to 375°F and line a muffin tin with paper liners or grease it well. 

2. In a large bowl, whisk together the melted butter, sugar, maple, eggs, vanilla, milk, juice, yogurt, and sourdough starter until smooth and well combined.

3. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and spices. Stir well.

4. Slowly mix the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, stirring gently until just combined. Avoid overmixing to keep the muffins light and fluffy!

5. Roughly chop the strawberries and coat with 2 tablespoons of flour to help keep them evenly distributed in the muffins. Gently fold the coated strawberries into the batter.

6. Using a portion scoop, add the batter into the muffin cups, filling each about 3/4 full.

7. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

If you need to hone your baking skills or want to get hands-on with sourdough, check out our Artisanal Breads Boot Camp (our next one is Saturday, March 15 at 10am) or how to bake breads classes at the chopping block. And of course, you can always find more info and recipes about sourdough here on our blog. Just search in the sidebar for "sourdough!"