Overnight Sourdough Muffins
on Oct 13, 2020, Updated May 20, 2024
This post may contain affiliate links. Please read our disclosure policy.
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
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
Chocolate Chip Sourdough Bread
Sourdough Recipes
Sourdough Banana Bread
Chocolate Chip Cookies
Sourdough Chocolate Chip Cookies
Sourdough Recipes
Sourdough Hamburger Buns
Did you make this recipe? Leave a ⭐️ review and share it on Instagram, Facebook, or Pinterest!
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.
Love this recipe, thank you adding it to the cast of sourdough Goodies. We substituted coconut sugar for white sugar, avocado oil for butter and left out the add-ins.The results were tenderness and a delightful moisture. Now that I know what to expect from the modified recipe, the sky is the limit. Next muffins will be Apple Cinnamon, Raisin. Thanks again. Enjoy your day.
1st – measures over weights?!?
I almost passed on this recipe because I do not know a decent sourdough baker who does not weigh ingredients, but a read through, And a desire for a decent fermented muffin had me making a half batch.
I am glad I did. They are quite good. I did cranberry hazelnut with an spiced applesauce center (to up the flavor profile). A keeper gor certain as your “blank slate” lends options to suit an taste. Thank You.
(I do feel sorry for the Reviewer who commented poorly, “burnt?”, it was definitely “operator error” and they are missing out on a sweet treat that the body can more readily process).
It’s a hard toss up in the US with folks and sourdough, I can add the weight measurements though!
good, fluffy muffin! I only used 15 minutes to bake my muffins. Next time I will try using plastic wrap to cover the dough overnight as the damp tea towel still dried out the top…
I made your sourdough bread it came out delicious the only disappointment is the bottom got a little burnt. I tried other recipes and they did the same thing any recommendations? I just made my dough for overnight muffins I’ll let you know how that turns turns out.
If the bottom is burning you can turn your oven down by 25 degrees OR you can bake your loaf with your pan on a cookie sheet or something similar. Sometimes that extra layer on the bottom can really help, or do both!
The texture is amazing, with a moistness you don’t find with a regular muffin recipe. I cut the amount of oil called for in half and add either applesauce, yogurt, or a combination thereof to replace the missing oil. Sometimes I even cut the sugar amount in half, just for health reasons. I’ll add a packet of stevia to replace some of the sugar. These are delicious, though not sweet, even with such a small amount of sugar. Chopped apple is my favorite addition. Do you ever happen to add mashed banana? Thank you for sharing this wonderful recipe!
I love this recipe! I make it regularly. I usually add a cup of almond flour or ground nuts to add protein for my little son ☺️
Very nice recipe. Dough was nice and puffy in the morning. I added more blueberries because 1/2 cup for 18 muffins didn’t seem like enough. Next time I think I will just make 12 muffins so they are bigger.
Yes! You for sure can and bake them a little longer! I tend to do quite small muffins since my kids are young…
I would definitely give these a 5-☆ rating on texture and taste, but I must admit I was doubtful about these muffins at the start as I wasn’t quite sure what consistently I should be aiming for with the initial mixture. I used the full 10 tablespoons of water with all-purpose flour and my starter is at 100% hydration. It still seemed awfully thick but I determined to “trust the process” anyway, expecting the long ferment might break it down.
This morning I almost threw the entire mess out, but I do like a challenge.
In the end, it required my stand mixer and paddle beater to finally incorporate the remaining ingredients into what became a thick, gelatinous, gloppy dough which acted a bit like melted, stringy mozzarella. I was expecting these would turn out more bread-like from the extra beating. I used 2 teaspoons cardamom instead of cinnamon and filled 12 muffin tins to their tops. Other than their peaked appearance (which, I learned in 1962 home ec class, is due to overbeating) I was very pleasantly surprised to find the muffins had a perfectly lovely moist and delicate texture and the flavour is awesome.
I would go about the recipe a bit differently next time, adjusting the consistency before the overnight ferment, but for now, it’s staying in my files and Ibwill try it again. 😉
Followed exact directions. Greasy, burnt edges, ugly and now in the garbage. With the price of groceries nowdays I am so done with food blogs.
There was some kind of disconnect on your end, I make this recipe all the time with great results…
It was definitely a process. I little disappointed in them. I added just a half cup of fruit because I was afraid it would ruin it, but needed double. The muffins aren’t sweet so you just feel like you are missing something. I would make again with more fruit. I should have read the comments first. Overall a good recipe with nice form and delicate texture.