Discarding sourdough starter bothers me, so I’m always on the lookout for ways to use the unfed starter on baking days before feeding my starter. This apple muffin recipe is one I like a lot — it’s hard to beat muffins filled with apples and pecans. I’d like to have more recipes to choose from to utilize the unfed starter, so if anyone has a good one, please send it my way.
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Whole Wheat Sourdough Apple Muffins
1 cup unfed sourdough starter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs, slightly beaten
1/4 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3/4 cup white flour
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup finely chopped apple (about 1 large apple)
1/2 cup chopped pecans
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Prepare a standard muffin pan with nonstick cooking spray.
In a large bowl, combine sourdough starter and sugar. Add eggs, vegetable oil, and vanilla extract.
In a separate bowl, whisk together both flours, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. Gradually stir the flour mixture into the sourdough mixture. Add apples and pecans. Fill muffin cups 3/4 full and bake about 20 minutes, or until muffins test done with a toothpick. Cool in pan 5 minutes, then remove to a wire rack. When muffins are cooled, add glaze.
Glaze
1/2 tablespoon melted butter
1 cup powdered sugar
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 tablespoons milk
In a small microwave safe bowl, melt the butter. Stir in powdered sugar and vanilla extract. Add milk and stir until smooth. Place glaze in a small zip top plastic bag. Snip off one corner of the bag and use to pipe glaze onto muffins.
These sound great, Anita. My question, though, is I always feed my starter and then use half for my bread. I'm trying to figure out how I would I make these, as I never use unfed starter?
Hi Kitty! When I take my starter out of the refrigerator, I remove 1 cup before feeding. This is the excess that can be used in a recipe, given away to a friend, or discarded. This is what I used in the muffin recipe. I haven't worked with sourdough for too long, so there might be a better way to handle the starter. I get pretty confused when I read about sourdough. lol. When you make your bread, you said you use half the starter, is that more than 1 cup of starter that goes into the bread? You've worked with sourdough for a long time, wish you would do a blog post on your method of feeding the starter and your bread recipe!
My directions that I got fourteen years ago, said to feed the starter and then use half for the bread and refrigerate the rest. Yes, it is more than one cup that I use in the bread. I've started using lots of grains in the bread and I love it even more.