Overnight Sourdough Muffins
on Oct 13, 2020, Updated May 20, 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
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
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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.
Made these muffins because I was looking for recipes where I can use my starter when it was ready raised late at night for something other then bread. I used 2 shredded apples and butter instead of oil, also used 1/2 cup chopped walnuts and 1 tsp cinnamon. The rise was very little out of the oven and the inside was more wet than I would like. Also thought I would reduce the sugar to 1/4 cup but will go back to 1/2 cup since they were not sweet at all. Would like to try this recipe again and hope to get a nice dryer inside not so eggy.
That’s a lot of shredded apple, I’d reduce that if you don’t want them so soft. They making the recipe as written and see how you like it and then add to it!
These are so delicious! I’ve made the recipe a few times & the most recent with the addition of dried apricot, toasted walnuts and tangerine zest is my fave so far!
Ohhh I love all of those things, that sounds so good!
I just did this accidentally last night (didn’t carefully read instructions while prepping 2 different overnight sourdough recipes) and they turned out fine. The top layer of the dough was a little darker, like it had oxidized a little, but I just stirred it up before portioning it into the muffin tins. They taste and look great still.
Very helpful to know! Thank you for taking the time to comment and let us know. Thank you!
I really like to let my muffin dough ferment overnight, but I was wondering if we can just mix all the ingredients and let that sit overnight. I just find it really hard to mix the ingredients after the flour/water/starter has been sitting b/c it changes consistency. Thanks for your thoughts!!
You could for sure try it, I have no idea what it’ll do…
Hi Betty, I had a similar problem getting the ingredients to mix properly. While it might be helpful to mix everything the night before, the soda should be held back as it will activate with the acid from the starter and not be able to lend the final rise to the muffins in the oven. Baking powder and baking soda should always be added to sourdough at the very end. Speaking from more than 50 years sourdough experience.
I won’t yet rate this recipe, because I want to give it a fair shot. I followed the directions to the tee and my muffins came out tasting very “eggy”. I’m wondering if there is a way to avoid that or maybe a step I did indeed miss?
Hmmmmm, that’s a new one for me. Do you feel like you were able to work the eggs into the batter well? Sometimes the slimy eggs and the wet overnight mixture need a heavy hand of mixing to get them to come together.
Great recipe! I has been making these for a few years. I recommend adding walnuts and extra cinnamon.
Thank you for this recipe they turned out really well, even though I made a few adjustments as I struggle to follow recipes. I swapped out half the oil and replaced it with apple sauce. I then cut the sugar in half, grated a small carrot and two small apples. Very very delicious!
The beauty of being a good cook, I get it 🙂 They sounds amazing!
These are great little muffins!
And I really thought I had messed them up, but they still turned out amazing. First, I used discard … I had just fed my starter and my discard jar was almost full, so I used it for the recipe instead of a bubbly fresher fed sourdough starter. Then, I probably should have added more water – I added 6 TBS – because I had to kind of get in and knead the levain to get it to hold together at all. In the morning, since the levain was still so stiff, I had to put it all in the stand mixer and use the paddle attachment to get the butter and eggs to mix in. My add-ins were 1 tsp vanilla, 1 tsp Apple Pie Spice blend, 1/2 cup mini chocolate chips, and 1/2 cup chopped walnuts. I portioned it into the muffin tin (12 hole), and tasted the dough … realized I had forgotten the sugar and salt, YIKES! So, I scraped it all back into the mixing bowl and added the sugar and salt, hoping that I wouldn’t end up overworking the batter.
Finally, popped them in the oven, and 25 minutes later we had delicious muffins! I just love a recipe that is resilient enough to survive several missteps along the way.
I’ve totally done the “I forgot something important and had to scrape out the batter from the pan” thing before, lol, I totally get it! I’m so glad they turned out well for you and you loved them. Thank you for leaving a review!
I started this recipe this evening because I thought it was sourdough banana. 😄 Guess my reading skills need some help! 😄 I’ve made sourdough banana muffins before, but the recipe didn’t require the overnight ferment. I really like the overnight fermentation time! So, I’m going to try these tomorrow and add overripe banana! I was thinking half a cup, but I may increase it. Going rogue, here! 😄
when do you put in the melted butter? maybe I am just not seeing it??
It’s in step 5, you add it in the morning after the first overnight ferment.