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Deliciously chocolatey sourdough discard chocolate muffins that are incredibly easy to make and even more tasty

What Is Sourdough Discard?

If you’ve ever made your own sourdough starter, been gifted one, or bought one ready to use, chances are you’re eager to bake bread. Bread might be the main reason for creating a starter, but it’s certainly not the only one. The portion you remove during feeding – known as sourdough discard – can be used in a wide range of bakes, adding a delicious depth of flavour thanks to the natural fermentation of the culture.

Whenever you feed your starter, whether to prepare for baking or simply to keep it healthy and active, the portion you remove from the jar is called sourdough discard. You might use it for bread, crackers, pancakes, or other recipes – but technically, it’s all discard. In reality, it’s still just sourdough starter; it’s simply given the name “discard” because it’s the part taken out of the jar during the feeding process.

Baking with Sourdough Discard

Sourdough discard can be added to almost any bake, but it’s important to consider the balance of flour and water it already contains when adapting a recipe. Because discard is simply unfed starter, it contributes both liquid and dry ingredients, so adjustments are often needed to maintain the right consistency.

One of the easiest and most satisfying ways to use it is by making anything cake based with discard. The recipe is wonderfully simple and also doesn’t require complicated calculations. While many discard recipes involve reducing some of the flour and liquid to compensate for the starter, these muffins worked out incredibly well and relatively similar in recipe to my ‘normal’ muffin recipes. The oil helps with moisture, but the added liquid from the discard contributes to wonderful muffin texture.

Wet ingredients for the muffins

For these sourdough discard chocolate muffins, I used discard that was straight out of the fridge and hadn’t been fed. You can use fed starter, but you honestly don’t have to. It looks a little weird when you mix everything in the bowl at first, but as you have to break down the discard which is quite thick, it’s not surprising.

Oil – I tend to use a flavourless oil such as vegetable or sunflower oil when it comes to a bake as I don’t want the flavour profile changed, but olive oil does also work if you want
Buttermilk – you can easily make this at home with a full-fat milk and lemon juice added in (125ml milk + 1 tsp lemon juice mixed in 5 minute before using in the recipe)
Eggs – I use two medium eggs, but you can use large eggs as well
Flavours – I tend to add vanilla extract into everything as I love it
Starter – I count this as a liquid even though it’s a mix of flour and water

Dry ingredients

I generally always mix the liquids together until combined with a hand whisk as you want it all incorporated together, and then I add my dry ingredients in and fold through with a spatula. The dry ingredients want to be mix in as little as possible to get a better texture to the muffin

Sugar – I wanted to use light brown soft sugar as I adore using it in all of my chocolate based bakes, but any sugar works
Flour – plain flour is important as you want to control the raising agent later in the recipe compared to using self raising
Cocoa – I like to use a strong cocoa powder to really fuel the flavour profile – I generally avoid hot chocolate powders as they are often too sugary
Raising agents – I use a small amount of baking powder to help lift the muffins texture
Salt – this is optional, but I really do adore a little sea salt added into a bake as it’s much tastier in my opinion
Chocolate – you can use chopped up bars of chocolate, chocolate chips, and of any flavour – I tend to use white chocolate and then also milk or dark for a mix