Sourdough discard muffins

I have been keeping my sourdough starter in the back of the fridge for a few years now and occasionally bringing it out for a feed and a bake. While I was feeding and discarding the starter, I was trying to figure out what to do with the discard, I came across this Moist Sourdough Blueberry Muffins recipe by Emilie Raffa:

It took me a year to get this recipe right. The texture is light and delicate, perfectly moist, with the taste of fresh blueberry goodness in every bite. You can bake these muffins on the same day, or to benefit from sourdough’s natural digestibility, ferment the batter overnight and bake in the morning.

I didn’t have the space in the fridge to keep the muffin batter overnight and decided I wanted to bake straight away.

The Recipe

I pulled out, discarded and fed the sourdough starter from the fridge the evening before making the muffins. I keep my discard in a separate jar so had plenty for this recipe and let that jar, together with the eggs and butter also come to room temperature before making the batter.

The Moist Sourdough Blueberry Muffins recipe of course needs blueberries. I checked the fridge and freezer and discovered I had no blueberries fresh or frozen, but still had a few frozen raspberries in the freezer. Since other family members love raspberry muffins, so I decided to make raspberry muffins instead. I kept the frozen raspberries in the freezer until it was time to add them to batter.

Making the muffin batter

• In general, I find most of the (western) baking recipes too sweet, and this recipe calls for 200 grams of granulated sugar. I decided to dial the sugar back and added 150 grams instead.
• I forgot to take the milk out of the fridge earlier so I heated the milk to lukewarm before adding the sourdough discard.
• I added the raspberries straight from the freezer into the mixed batter.
• There was so much batter that I generally filled each muffin liner to the brim instead of stopping at 2/3.

Baking and eating the muffins

I decided to bake the raspberry muffins straight away instead of leaving them ferment in the fridge overnight. Because I filled the muffin liners very generously, for a moment I was afraid the muffins would overflow. Luckily that didn’t happen and they came out golden and crispy. They were delicious and had a light tang to them due to the discard, but nothing too noticeable. I will definitely make these again and will put them into the fridge for an overnight ferment. Maybe even use blueberries instead of raspberries next time 😊