Quick & Easy Homemade Sourdough Muffins

No more tossing your excess sourdough starter, instead, mix up a batch of these quick & easy homemade sourdough muffins. The flavor variations are endless and you’ll have delicious muffins ready in just under 30 minutes.

This recipe was originally published in 2017 and has recently been updated with tips and additional baking instructions.

We all want muffins that are good for us and easy to digest, but we can’t all wait 8 hours to get these healthy benefits by making traditional sourdough muffins, letting the sourdough starter work its magic! There has to be a better way!

Y’all are in luck…I took to the kitchen testing recipe after recipe until I nailed down a delicious no-wait sourdough muffin recipe with a boatload of variations. It’s the perfect solution for extra sourdough starter, and yet another reason to start a sourdough starter if you don’t already have one going (or perhaps you need a gluten-free sourdough starter?)!

The key is having an active and thick sourdough starter. I’m in the routine of feeding Seymour (as in, “Feed me, Seymour!”), my sourdough starter nightly.

By feeding my starter in the evening, it’s always ready in the morning whether I’m baking bread, making pancakes, starting these heavenly sourdough cinnamon rolls, or our whipping up a batch of these yummy sourdough English muffins!

Another trick for these sourdough muffins is to keep your sourdough starter rather thick. It should be quite difficult to stir when adding the water and flour (I always add slightly less than double the flour as water…so if I add one cup water, I’ll add just under two cups flour, this is roughly a 100% hydration). 

Ready to bake? Then let’s gather those supplies!

Do I Need to Let This Recipe Sour?

No! That’s the beauty of these no-wait sourdough muffins. You’re using 100% sourdough discard (which is sourdough starter that’s been fed within 6-12 hours prior to baking) plus mix-ins for this recipe. Because your flour has already been soaked for a minimum of 6 hours, you’re ready to go for a completely digestible sourdough muffin.

This recipe is my favorite because, many times when I want a sourdough muffin, I don’t want to wait 6 hours for the flour to soak or sour!

Ingredients

• Sourdough starter – this recipe works best with sourdough starter that’s been fed within 6-12 hours of baking. A well-established starter is also recommended. If your starter has been neglected without regular feedings, your muffins may turn out with more of a sour flavor.
• Eggs – room temperature eggs work best when baking. If you don’t have time to let your egg come to room temperature, place your egg in a bowl of warm water for about 10 minutes.
• Vanilla extract – muffins and extracts are like bread and butter… ya gotta have both! See our flavor options for other extract variations.
• Sea salt – always
• Coconut oil – we’ve used melted coconut oil, butter, avocado oil, and even olive oil successfully in this recipe. Choose which you like best (or simply use what you have on hand).
• Sugar – this recipe calls for coconut sugar, but you can also use regular organic sugar, honey and even maple syrup. If using a liquid sweetener, start with 3/4 the called for amount and adjust as needed. Alternatively, you can add an extra 1/4 cup sourdough starter to offset the added liquid.
• Baking soda – this is what gives these muffins their rise. Because we’re not feeding the starter with flour and letting it rise for 6-8 hours, we need the rapid rising power of baking soda.
• Add-ins – check the flavor options below and pick your favorite!

How to Make This Recipe

What I love about this recipe is that it’s nearly identical to making a regular muffin recipe. There’s no souring time, which means you just dump in the ingredients, mix them together, scoop some into your muffin pan, and bake! The hardest part is deciding which flavor you’re going to try first.

Gather ingredients

Read through all the flavor options below, then gather your ingredients, measure them out and proceed to the mixing step. Now is a great time to preheat the oven to 400℉. This recipe whips together so quickly that it’s a drag when you forget to preheat the oven first!

Mix ingredients together

Add sourdough starter, egg, vanilla, salt, and sugar (all your wet ingredients) to a large bowl and whisk on low until combined. (Do be sure to read through the recipe variations because there may be additional ingredients added throughout the basic steps.)

Since there are no traditional “dry ingredients” to this recipe, now is when you’d add in your mix-ins (unless otherwise noted below).

Melt coconut oil (or melted butter works well) in a small pot on the stove and add to the mixing bowl. Mix on low until combined.

Add baking soda and mix on low just until batter begins to bubble up and grow in size (this is the magic of sourdough starter and baking soda!). DO NOT OVERMIX!

Gently stir in remaining mix-ins by hand.

Line and fill muffin cups

It’s been my experience that these sourdough muffins like to stick to paper muffin cups. If you get the heavier-duty parchment paper variety, they stick a little less. My preference is to get these silicone baking cups and you won’t have any issues with sticking.

Alternatively, you can butter then flour your muffin tin.

Add approximately 1/4 cup batter to each muffin cup. You want to fill them about 3/4 full. These muffins rise less than traditional muffins, so for a muffin that won’t deflate, be sure you’ve added enough batter to the pan.

Bake

Bake muffins for 15 minutes in a preheated, 400℉ oven. Certain flavor combinations bake at different times, so check your muffins after the 12-minute mark and bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Allow muffins to cool for 2-3 minutes in the pan, then remove to a wire rack to cool completely.

The muffins tend to firm up once cooled.

Sourdough Muffin Flavor Options

As you can tell, we adore this muffin recipe. It’s the perfect base for pretty much any flavor craving I can imagine.

A classic go-to in our house are the sourdough blueberry muffins pictured above. But one of my favorite indulgences is the chocolate chip cheesecake variation (which could easily be a double chocolate cheesecake recipe by adding in cocoa powder!). You can see that ooey-gooey combination further up in this post.

Follow the instructions below to make your sourdough muffins the perfect flavor:

• Blueberry: Add 1/2 tsp. almond extract at step 2, and 1/2 cup fresh or frozen blueberries at step 5.
• Carrot Cake: Add 1/2 cup grated carrots at step 2, 1 tsp cinnamon and 1 tsp lemon zest at step 5.
• Chocolate-Chocolate Chip: Add 1/4 cup cocoa powder at step 2, and 1/2 cup chocolate chips at step 5. Use the full 1/2 cup coconut sugar to offset the bitterness of the cocoa powder.
• Chocolate Cheesecake: Add 1/2 cup chocolate chips at step 5. Cube 4 tablespoons cream cheese and place a couple cubes on top before baking. Make chocolate-chocolate cheesecake muffins by adding 1/4 cup cocoa powder during step 1.
• Lemon Poppy-seed: Add 1 Tbs poppy-seeds, 2 tsp. almond extract, 1 tsp lemon zest or 5 drops lemon essential oil at step 2.
• Coconut: Add 1/2 cup shredded coconut at step 5, and sprinkle shredded coconut on top before baking.
• Pumpkin Pie: Add 1/2 cup pumpkin puree and 2 tsp pumpkin pie spice at step 2.
• Banana Nut: Add 1/2 cup mashed, very ripe banana and 1 tsp. cinnamon at step 2, and 1/4 cup crushed walnuts, pecans or slivered almonds at step 5.
• Zucchini: Add 1 tsp cinnamon at step 2 and 1/2 cup grated zucchini (that’s been squeezed to remove excess liquid) at step 5. 
• Apple, Carrot, Zucchini: Add 1 tsp cinnamon at step 2, grate 1/4 cup apple, 1/4 cup carrot, and 1/4 cup zucchini and squeeze out as much moisture as possible, allowing to strain for 5-10 minutes. Once you have squeezed out as much liquid as possible, add during step 5.
• Cinnamon Raisin: Add 2 tsp cinnamon at step 2 and 1/2 cup raisins at step 5. 

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