If you’ve been following my Instagram page, you’ll have noticed some posts and stories about trying to revive my very dormant sourdough starter. Basically this entails feeding it like crazy, until the microbes start to revive and everything gets all bubbly and happy again. During that process if you don’t use or discard a portion of your starter you’ll just be overrun with the stuff, and since I’m a big fan of zero-waste, I’ve been trying to use it in various ways.

One thing that I’ve found really interesting is that you can use sourdough in a quick bread recipe, and it reacts with the baking soda in the same way as adding another acid. This recipe uses some starter, but if you don’t have it try omitting it, and substituting the juice partially or in full for yogurt, or buttermilk. Alternatively if you still want them to be dairy free try substituting the starter for applesauce, and a bit more flour. There should be enough acid in the juice and the applesauce to activate the baking soda, but it won’t be quite the same in the end. And if you don’t have a sourdough starter making one is really easy! There are a lot of awesome tutorials available if you give it a quick google.

You’ll also notice this recipe calls for ‘pumpkin pie spice’. I don’t normally use ready made spice blends, but the one from Silk Road Spice Merchants in Calgary is amazing and I highly recommend it. I also used the Western Family brand Wassail as the juice in my muffins since it is what I had in my fridge at the time, and so these muffins were very heavily spiced. I felt like this was perfect for fall/winter food, but you can use whatever mix of spices you like. Pumpkin pie spice usually contains cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, allspice, and ginger. Use these spices in whatever ratio you like them best and your muffins will be delicious.

There isn’t too much in this recipe that needs a lot of explaining, but do make sure you combine the wet ingredients (sourdough starter, oil, juice, eggs, vanilla) and sugar in one bowl, and the rest of the dry ingredients in another bowl until you are ready to mix your final muffin dough. The starter reacts with the baking soda really quickly, and this reaction is your primary leavening agent so you want to make sure that is almost the very last thing that happens. I like the apple grated into the muffins, but it does tend to disappear into the overall texture that way, so if you want them to be more obvious try chopping them into small pieces and mixing that in. I save myself a step and don’t bother peeling my apples since you don’t really notice the skins when they are all baked into the overall texture.

Let me know if you have any further questions in the comments! I’d love to hear how these turn out for you if you give them a try!

Apple Muffins with Sourdough Starter

Ingredients

1 cup sourdough starter (any type)
1 cup apple juice
2 large eggs
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup oil
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
2 cups all purpose flour
1 apple (grated)

Takes 35 min, serves one dozen muffins.

Instructions

Preheat your oven to 350˚F.
Combine sourdough starter, juice, sugar, eggs, oil, and vanilla until smoothly blended and homogenous. If your starter is a bit stiff this might take a little bit of time, but make sure there are no lumps remaining when you are done.
Whisk the dry ingredients together, and then combine with the wet ingredient mixture. You will notice the baking soda reacting to the acid in the sourdough starter almost immediately, so it is important that you work quickly and don’t allow the mixture to sit for long. Stir gently until the mixture is just combined. You don’t want to over mix this.
Gently stir in grated apple.
Evenly distribute your batter into one standard size muffin tin.
Bake for approximately 25 minutes or an inserted toothpick or cake tester comes out clean.