Sourdough Lemon Muffins: Quick Sourdough Recipe (2024)

Published: May 25, 2021 · Modified: Sep 27, 2022 by The Pantry Mama This post may contain affiliate links.

Sourdough lemon muffins combine the delicious zingy tang of lemons with the goodness of sourdough to bring you a taste sensation.

These sourdough lemon muffins have a tender, cakey crumb and a crunchy top that's drizzled with a lemon glaze. Seriously, you won't be able to stop at just one!

This recipe uses 200g of sourdough starter - you can use fed, active starter or you can use discard. Whatever you have on hand.

If you are building a new starter, this is a great recipe to use a lot of discard in one hit (as long as your starter is at least 7 days old). Other muffin flavors include orange cranberry sourdough muffins and long fermented blueberry sourdough muffins. If you prefer a savory muffin, you might like these sourdough zucchini muffins with cheese and chives.

How To Make Sourdough Lemon Muffins

Muffins made with sourdough starter are pretty easy. These lemon sourdough muffins take just a few minutes to throw together. With baking time, they can be done in under 30 minutes!

One of the most important things to do to make these muffins shine is make sure you use unwaxed lemons. If you can get a lemon from someone's lemon tree it will give your muffins the most amazing taste and fragrance.

How to make sourdough lemon muffins:

1. Preheat your oven.
2. Mix the sourdough starter, eggs, oil, lemon juice and vanilla together in a bowl. Make sure you mix them together really well and that the eggs are well beaten.
3. Mix the flour, baking powder, salt, lemon zest and sugar in a separate bowl.
4. Now pour the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients.
5. Use a spatula and mix them until they are just combined – do not over mix!!
6. Spoon the muffin batter into a greased 12 hole muffin tin.
7. Bake until golden.
8. While the muffins are baking, mix the powdered sugar and lemon juice together.
9. Spoon the glaze over the sourdough muffins while they are still hot in the muffin tin.
10. Allow the glaze to soak in and the muffins to cool before removing from the tin.

Does Sourdough Discard Spoil?

You can choose to make these sourdough lemon muffins with fed, active starter or sourdough discard.

Sourdough discard is just unfed sourdough starter. For more sourdough terminology, check out this sourdough glossary.

If you leave unfed sourdough starter on the kitchen counter for a long time, it will eventually be overtaken by bad bacteria and mold, rendering it unusable.

Discard does eventually spoil because it has no more food to feed the bacteria and yeast in the sourdough starter.

Keeping sourdough discard in the fridge will give it a longer life, however because you aren't feeding it, it will eventually become very sour and even develop hooch.

Try to use up discard within a 2 week period, even if it's kept in the refrigerator. After this, it may become too sour and will impart an unpleasant flavor into baked goods.

There are so many ways you can use your discard - you'll find a tonne of sourdough discard recipes here.

Do You Feed Sourdough Discard?

In a word - no! If you do feed sourdough discard - it becomes active sourdough starter. You discard your starter right before you feed. If you don't discard your starter, it will grow exponentially and take over your kitchen.

Discarding also regulates acidity levels in your sourdough starter.

Try to resist the temptation to feed your sourdough discard - read this if you would like more information on this topic.

Instead of feeding your sourdough discard - bake with it!

Tips For Successful Sourdough Muffins

• Don't over mix the batter. Ensure that the wet ingredients are well combined before you pour into the dry ingredients. Use a silicone spatula to just combine them. If you over mix the batter the muffins will be tough and chewy.

• Don't use sourdough discard that's really old and sour - it will give you an unpleasant flavor in your muffins.

• If you want to make these muffins, but don't have 200g of starter or discard, these instructions will show you how to increase the amount of starter you have on hand.

• Use the freshest lemons possible - they are best if you pick them from a tree to ensure the rind has no wax or chemicals added.

Flavor Variations for Sourdough Lemon Muffins

While these sourdough lemon muffins are perfect in their simplicity, you could also jazz them up with these flavor variations:

• add a few teaspoons of poppy seeds to the dry ingredients before pouring in the wet ingredients to make sourdough lemon and poppyseed muffins.

• top the batter with some flaked almonds before you place them into the oven.

• adding orange zest as well as lemon zest will give you lovely citrus sourdough muffins.

• add 100g of white chocolate chips to the dry ingredients before pouring in the wet ingredients to make white chocolate and lemon sourdough muffins.

• add some frozen or dried blueberries for a version of sourdough lemon and blueberry muffins.

• add a few handfuls of tinned pineapple pieces to the dry ingredients before you pour the liquid ingredients in.

Further Reading

If you love this recipe for sourdough lemon muffins, you might enjoy some of these ideas:

• Sourdough Zucchini Muffins

• Lemon and White Chocolate Sourdough Bread

• Best Sourdough Banana Muffins [with 20 flavor variations]

• Raspberry Sourdough Muffinswith orange and coconut

• Sourdough Apple Cake - it's sooooo good served with whipped cream!

• Apple and Cinnamon Sourdough Muffins

• Try these no wait sourdough recipes - there's one that you're sure to love!