Sourdough Corn Muffins

Sourdough corn muffins – a warm, delicious quick bread that goes great with soups, chili, and almost any main dish recipe.

Jump to Recipe

Updated 1/28/21

I updated this recipe because I have found that I prefer to use melted butter as the oil. Also, a little flour makes the batter a little bit more stiff, which results in firmer muffins. The addition of flour is optional and it depends mostly on the moisture content of your sourdough discard. Mine is pretty moist and I find that the flour helps. In addition, I recently created some lentil chili that goes great with these corn muffins. Enjoy!

About These Sourdough Corn Muffins

Cornbread and corn muffins are standard fare in many households. I grew up eating cornbread regularly, so when I started my sourdough I knew that I would have to try using it in cornbread. I’ve used this batter to make these muffins and pan cornbread. It’s a good way to use some sourdough discard and make an out-of-the ordinary batch of corn muffins. Due to an egg allergy, I use an egg replacer, but feel free to use an egg in this recipe. I used 2% milk in these muffins, but I’ve used cashew milk and buttermilk with good success too.

Ingredients

Dry Ingredients

• Cornmeal – use your favorite brand
• Egg replacer – Bob’s Red Mill Egg Replacer, The Neat Egg, or flaxseed meal with water
• Flour – a few tablespoons to 1/2 cup might be needed depending on the moisture content of your sourdough
• Salt, baking soda, and baking powder – helps make the batter rise
• Sugar – adds a bit of sweetness to the muffins

Wet Ingredients

• Sourdough starter – use discard
• Butter or Melted shortening – you can substitute refined coconut oil
• Milk – use nut milk to make these vegan muffins

Sourdough Discard

Keeping sourdough means feeding it regularly, and you always have to discard some of the sourdough when you feed it. I pour that discarded sourdough into a container and refrigerate it for use in biscuits, scones, pancakes, and these corn muffins. The yeast and bacteria that makes sourdough bread rise is not active enough in the discard, so it needs help in the way of baking powder and/or baking soda. But the discard still has the tangy sourdough flavor that gives the resulting baked goods that distinctive taste. For more info about sourdough and using discard, check out this article.

Because this recipe contains baking powder and baking soda, I call it a quick bread even though the sourdough has some active yeast and bacteria in it. Quick breads, as the name implies, are quick to make because they don’t require any yeast that has to rise slowly over the course of several hours. They rise up while baking. Go here for more info on quick breads.

Making Sourdough Corn Muffins

1. Prepare the batter

• Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
• Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl.
• Melt the butter or shortening.
• Mix the wet ingredients in a small mixing bowl.
• Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, stirring thoroughly.
• Stir in the melted butter or shortening.
• Add flour as needed.

2. Bake the muffins

• Add the dough to the muffin cups, filling them about 2/3 full.
• Bake the muffins for 15-18 minutes.
• Muffins are done when you insert a toothpick and it comes out clean.
• Remove muffins from the muffin cups and put them on a cooling rack.

Serving Sourdough Corn Muffins

Sourdough corn muffins are best when served warm. Slather on some butter or margarine and serve them alongside a meal or eat them as is.

You can use this batter to make sourdough cornbread, baked in a baking pan instead of muffins. Whether you make muffins or cornbread, the results are tasty and go great with a hearty soup like my Instant Pot Lentil Cabbage Soup or Lentil Chili.

Shown below with lentil chili with farro:

Expert Tips

• You’ll probably use sourdough discard to make the sourdough corn muffin batter, and that discard will likely be cold. I put some warm water in a bowl and put the container of discard in that bowl of warm water for a few minutes. The timing works out well if you do that step first and then get the other ingredients ready. When you add the discard, you’ll notice that it has some bubbles as the warmth activates the natural yeast and bacteria.
• If you’re someone who cooks with eggs, you can use an egg instead of an egg replacer.
• I think these muffins taste best when butter is used as the oil, but you can use melted shortening or refined coconut oil in the batter.
• Sourdough varies from person to person, so your sourdough might be wetter or drier than the one I used in this recipe. If the resulting batter is too dry, add more milk; or if it’s too wet, add a little flour to achieve the desired batter consistency.

Other recipes you might like

If you’re a fan of quick breads, try mellow muffins or weekend biscuits. And if you have sourdough, try sourdough scones with granola.

Where to get sourdough starter

If this recipe looks tempting, but you don’t have your own sourdough starter, you can get one where I got mine – at Cultures for Health. I used the San Francisco variety. If you click through to this link and purchase the starter, I’ll get a little bit of money and it won’t cost you any extra. Or use the link below to see the various items you can get at Cultures for Health.