Overnight Sourdough Muffins
on Oct 13, 2020, Updated Sep 30, 2024
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Overnight Sourdough Muffins are perfect to whip up the night before and finish in the morning for a breakfast of champions. Is there anything better than a warm sourdough muffin on a cold morning?
It’s a common misconception that sourdough is just bread with a hard crust. But the truth is you can use sourdough for any type of bread, waffles, crackers, muffins or even pizza crust.
Use this basic overnight sourdough muffin recipe to mix in fruit, nuts or chocolate chips- whatever you are in the mood for!
While this recipe calls for active bubbly sourdough starter, you can use active starter or discard in Sourdough Banana Bread and Sourdough Biscuits.
Table of Contents
🍞 18 Easy Sourdough Recipes!
Why You’ll Love This Recipe
- Super easy way to make a healthy breakfast because most of the work happens the night before.
- Comes together quickly (most of the time involved is letting the muffin batter rest).
- Get the health benefits associated with fermented foods via the sourdough.
- It’s fun to customize these muffins with fruits, nuts, and chocolate.
Recipe Ingredients
- Bubbly and active sourdough starter: This recipe wasn’t designed for discard.
- Flour: You can use whole wheat or all-purpose flour in this recipe.
- Water
- Light oil or melted butter
- Sugar
- Eggs
- Baking soda
- Salt
- Cinnamon: optional
- Fresh or dried fruit and/or chopped nuts: These are optional.
See the recipe card below for full information on ingredients and quantities.
How to Make Overnight Sourdough Muffins
Step #1. Mix together your starter, flour, and water until you can combine it well. Cover the mixture and let it rest 8-12 hours (generally overnight).
Step #2. Add the additional ingredients needed in the morning and stir just until the mixture comes together.
Step #3. Fold in your mix-ins.
Step #4. Pour the batter into your greased muffin pan and bake at 375 degrees for about 25 minutes.
Recipe FAQs
You can make your own, buy a starter, or get one from a friend. If you are new to sourdough, I recommend reading more on the basics of sourdough.
You could add ½ cup of dried cranberries and 2 teaspoons of orange zest or ½ cup chocolate chips or ¼ cup apples diced small and ¼ cup chopped pecans or walnuts. Whatever you dream up, try to limit the mix-ins to ½ cup total.
Yes. This is a great recipe to freeze. Make sure the muffins are totally cool after baking before putting them in an airtight container and then into the freezer. You can store sourdough muffins in the freezer for up to three months.
Expert Tips
- If you don’t add any fruit or nuts to these muffins, be sure to add the cinnamon or they will be pretty bland.
- Toss fresh or frozen fruit in a little flour to stop them from sinking to the bottom of the muffins.
- If you fill the muffin tins fuller, your muffins may need an extra couple of minutes in the oven.
- Serve the warm muffins with butter and jam.
More Sourdough Recipes to Consider
Sourdough Recipes
Sourdough Cinnamon Swirl Bread – A Perfect Breakfast Loaf
Sourdough Recipes
No Knead Sourdough Bread {Easy Beginner’s Recipe}
Sourdough Recipes
How to Feed a Sourdough Starter: Prepping for Perfect Loaves
Sourdough Recipes
Soft & Fluffy Sourdough Challah Bread
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Overnight Sourdough Muffins
Ingredients
- ½ cup bubbly and active sourdough starter
- 1 ½ cups whole wheat or all-purpose flour
- 6-10 tablespoons of water, as needed
- ½ cup light oil or melted butter
- ½ cup sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon, optional
- ½ cup fresh or dried fruit and/or chopped nuts, optional
Instructions
- The night before you plan to make the muffins mix together the sourdough starter, flour, water together in a medium mixing bowl.
- The mixture should be a shaggy slightly wet dough, not thick but not soupy either. The amount of water you need will depend on the type of flour that you use; you’ll need more water when using whole wheat flour. Adjust the water by adding 1 tablespoon at a time until the dough is just wet enough to mix.
- Cover the bowl with a damp clean kitchen towel and let the dough rest for 8-12 hours.
- In the morning, after the resting time, preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
- Add the oil, sugar, eggs, baking soda, and salt to the bowl with the fermented flour mixture and stir just until the mixture comes together.
- Next decide if you are going to add anything else. If you aren’t going to add fruit or nuts, add 1 teaspoon cinnamon, it makes the muffins have more depth to them.
- You can also add roughly ½ cup total of fresh fruit, dried chopped fruit, or chopped nuts or seeds if you’d like. Please see notes. Stir in any additions.
- Grease 18 muffin cups well and then pour the batter evenly into the muffin cups, the cups will be about half full.
- Bake for 25 minutes or until the muffins spring back when lightly touched.
- Remove from the oven and let cool for 5 minutes before removing the muffins from the tin. Enjoy warm or at room temperature.
Notes
- You can add all kinds of things to this muffin recipe! We like to add frozen blueberries, small chopped apples and pecans, dried cranberries and 1 tablespoon of orange zest.
- Toss fresh fruit or frozen fruit with a little flour before adding it to discourage it from sinking to the bottom while baking.
- You can make different sized muffins depending on how full you fill the tins; these are pretty small muffins and perfect for kids. Adjust the cooking time accordingly if you are filling the tins up more or less.
- These muffins are so good served warm and slathered with butter.
Sooo good!! My boys love them and even my picky eater friend ate quite a few! About to make another batch!
Can I try these without the baking soda? I’m looking for a muffin recipe with only sourdough for leavening! Thank you! Great page!
Yes! I think you’ll find success! Maybe let them rise in the pan longer!
Oh man, these were delicious!! They are super moist with a wonderful crumb, light and airy. I subbed mine with raw milk instead of water and added frozen blueberries on top not in the mix. Baked them 20 minutes half in muffin tins & donut tins. Absolutely scrumptious! 10/10 recommend and our family of 7 will be making these forever now. Thank you!!
I’m so glad you liked them Monika!! Great idea on putting them in the donut tin!
So — if I want the overnight ferment, but your chocolate muffins then I’ll try adding the “extras” from the chocolate muffins after letting the flour, water and starter sit overnight. What do you think?
If you try it let me know!!
These were yummy plain. My family really enjoyed them. Next time I will add berries or maybe apples.
Came out great! Added frozen blueberries and no cinnamon. I wasn’t sure how the overnight mix should look, I added water till I had a thick pancake batter, seemed to work great. Yummy! Thank you for a great recipe!
What I really liked about these muffins was the long fermentation–that alone is motivation to explore the possibilities by experimenting to my heart’s content! Has anyone tried wetter fruit, like applesauce, pumpkin, grated carrots, or bananas?
Our daughter has an egg allergy so we use applesauce instead of the egg. This recipe still works great! We like to mix in diced apples too. It has become our go-to muffin recipe!
Oh, I love that applesauce works, that’s really simple!
Hi, excited to try this. What kind of sugar did you use?
I have organic granulated sugar at home!
These were very easy to make and super tasty! I just went with a simple add-in of 1.5 teaspoons cinnamon and a little splash of vanilla for a very warm flavor for this muffin! Thanks for the recipe!
So good!! For my add-ins, I did lemon zest and juice from one lemon and 1T poppyseeds. Delish! The whole family loved them.
Ohhhh that sounds incredible! I hadn’t thought of a lemon poppy seed option!