This year has been the year of sourdough! I have been making it for a few years, but I love that 2020 has had a lot more people jumping on the bandwagon. I used the coronavirus quarantine as an opportunity to research other sourdough baking methods out there and decided to perfect mine. I had to look no further than this method from A Beautiful Plate. Looking into her method, I realized that I was doing a few things wrong with my process. First, I wasn’t using a food scale, which is essential for sourdough baking. I learned that I was putting in way too much flour. Second, I wasn’t discarding my sourdough starter down each day prior to feeding it. That meant that my ratio of starter to flour was off and my starter wasn’t as active. Discarding your starter means that you are either throwing it away, or using your excess starter in a recipe like these sourdough muffins!
The last mistake I made with my bread was that I was using only all-purpose flour. The other tip that I learned is that a mix of bread flour and whole wheat flour will give you the best loaf due to the protein content of the flours. Thanks to these lessons and the extremely helpful instruction I found with A Beautiful Plate, my sourdough loaves are better than ever! The one thing I don’t like is tossing my sourdough starter discard every day. Thankfully there are a lot of recipes online, like these sourdough muffins (with chocolate chips for good measure, and sourdough pancakes and waffles! I’m working on testing some more recipes that use sourdough starter as well, but these muffins have already been a huge hit with my kids.
These are the perfect breakfast muffins because they come together quickly, use whole wheat flour, and are naturally sweetened. They’re also dairy-free because I used almond milk in the recipe, but any milk will work if you’re not opposed to dairy. My kids gobbled them up and I know it’ll be a recipe that I make with my sourdough starter discard again and again. If there are any other muffin flavors or baked goods that you want to see using sourdough starter, just comment below and let me know!
- ½ cup sourdough starter discard*
- 1 egg
- ½ cup almond milk
- ½ cup plain, full-fat Greek yogurt
- ¼ cup oil
- 1 tsp. vanilla extract
- 1¾ cups whole wheat flour
- ½ cup coconut sugar (you can also use granulated sugar if they don't need to be naturally sweetened)
- 1½ tsp. baking powder
- ½ tsp. baking soda
- ¼ tsp. salt
- ½ tsp. cinnamon
- ½ cup rolled oats
- ¾ cup chocolate chips
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Spray a muffin tin with nonstick cooking spray and set aside.
- In a large bowl, whisk together sourdough starter, egg, almond milk, yogurt, oil, and vanilla.
- In a small bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and rolled oats.
- Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients and mix until just combined. Fold in chocolate chips.
- Evenly divide batter in prepared muffin pan.
- Bake for 20-25 minutes until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Let cool in pan for a few minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
- Enjoy!
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These were really good! I used raisins instead of chocolate chips and also replace half the flour with APF.