Traditional sourdough biscuits are simple and delicious buns that are perfect for anytime you want fresh bread for dinner, without taking the time to make a proper loaf of sourdough bread. They are also a great way to use up extra sourdough starter.
Sourdough biscuits are similar to buttermilk biscuits, in that an acidic batter is mixed with baking soda for a fast rising bread. However, buttermilk biscuits are cake-like, and using a sourdough starter means that sourdough biscuits already have a well-developed gluten structure, creating a bun instead.
Sourdough biscuits are perfect for:
- quick and easy dinner rolls
- small sandwiches
- hamburgers
- sloppy joes
Best of all, they are great way to use up a lot of extra sourdough starter!
Quick Sourdough Biscuits
Traditional sourdough biscuits are delicious and soft buns that are quick and easy to make. They are also a great way to use up a LOT of extra sourdough starter.
- Prep Time: 1 hour
- Cook Time: 20 minutes
- Total Time: 1 hour 20 minutes
- Yield: 8 buns 1x
- Category: Bread
- Method: Sourdough
Ingredients
Dough
- 2 cups sourdough starter (see notes)
- 1 – 1 1/2 cups flour
- 2 tsp sugar
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 2 tbsp melted butter (or oil)
Egg wash
- 1 egg
- 1 tbsp water
- a pinch salt
Instructions
- Combine all the dough ingredients in a large bowl and mix until the dough starts to form. You may need to adjust the level of flour based on the consistency of your sourdough starter. You want a soft dough.
- Knead as required to bring the dough together. However, don’t over knead. The goal is to bring the bread together, without making a strong gluten structure.
- Roll the dough out on a floured surface until it is 1 cm thick. Using a biscuit cutter
(affiliate link) cut out as many circles as you can. The scraps of dough can be quickly kneaded together and hand formed into 1 or 2 more circles.
- Lay the biscuits out on a greased baking sheet and leave them in a warm place to rise for at least 1 hour. They only need to double in size, as they will continue to puff up when baking.
- Beat together the ingredients of the egg wash, then brush the tops of the biscuits with the egg wash.
- Bake at 375 F for 20 min or until brown.
(affiliate link) cut out as many circles as you can. The scraps of dough can be quickly kneaded together and hand formed into 1 or 2 more circles.Notes
- You will need a healthy sourdough starter to make these quick biscuits.
- The egg wash is perfect for sticking toppings to your buns. Feel free to sprinkle on sesame seeds, poppy seeds or grated Asiago cheese.
Keywords: leftover starter, excess starter, quick, easy, vegan, egg free, dairy free, 10 ingredients or less, spring, summer, holidays
What? No water?
Nope. Just lots of sourdough starter. 🙂 However, if it’s a bit dry (depending on the type of flour you use, and the saturation ratio of your sourdough starter) you can add a bit of extra water.
I must say, I was slightly sceptical at first given the weird, chemical smell upon combining the starter with baking soda (I’m not a chemist but I’m assuming it was due to the acid and alkaline reacting) and I had to scale the recipe down significantly (who on Earth has 2 cups of sourdough discard?!) which meant I probably overdid it with the baking soda and the biscuits didn’t rise very much when left on the counter. However, I followed the rest of the instructions and they were absolutely delicious! The texture was perfect, they were fluffy, golden and crispy. This is going to be my new go-to recipe for sourdough discard! Thank you!
★★★★★
Hi! Glad you like the recipe. The baking soda was reacting with the acidity of the sourdough starter. It’s like a quick bread rather than a yeast-raised bread. 🙂 And I never have sourdough discard… however, I just feed up my sourdough starter to get enough for this recipe. Cheers, Emillie
I wondered about the 2 cp starter. sent an s o s out to Daughters-in-lpve and one had more than enough. I personally probably keep a healthy 1 1/2 cp in my fridge and feed that as needed. So 2 cps was like wow okay. Not happening alone here need some love. and there they were.
Nice! I designed this recipe for those people who end up with way too much starter (it happens!). I’m more like you, I feed my starter for my recipes and only keep a small amount in the fridge. 🙂
Made these today but not sure I did everything right. Is this for cold refrigerated starter discard that hasn’t been fed for 2-3 days or active bubbly starter that is doubled upon adding to this recipe? I’m new to sourdough baking.
It can be made with either… usually, I use fresh sourdough. However, because the baking soda rises the bread, you can use old discard. The sourdough is more for acidity than rising. It’s not like a typical sourdough bread. Enjoy!
Hey Emillie thank you!
I made an experimental version of these biscuits today.
I used 100% whole wheat flour and subbed honey for the sugar.
I used extra baking soda (1tsp per cup of flour) because I hypothesized that the whole wheat flour would need extra rise power to be lifted.
After 2 hours left to “rise” there was not much action, maybe 50%
I went ahead and put them in the oven anyways 🙂
They are quite flat but not dense and for sure a biscuit! Not at all a bun like I was hoping for for dinner from your description.
The amazing thing is, the taste is SO delightful!
This is my first time baking with my first ever starter, and I am really happy to know the flavor profile of my child is sooo beautiful 🙂
And the texture is so nice I might try the same technique again with a cookie flavor profile.
Thank you again!
I’d be happy to hear what you think I could experiment with using whole wheat to get the bun effect 🙂
Now I am enjoying a biscuit with butter and tea…
★★★★★
Hum… my loaf always is more bun-like than biscuit-like. I wonder if honey added a bit of sweetness? It’s not the whole wheat flour, as you can see from the pictures, I pretty much always bake with a mixture of whole-grain flour. 🙂 Perhaps try kneading for a bit longer to develop the gluten? Glad you enjoyed the flavour!
I’m new to sourdough baking – and had terrific success with your PAIN DE CAMPAGNE: FRENCH SOURDOUGH BREAD. Thank you! What I’m wondering, is how do you ever have leftover or excess starter? I have been working almost daily to grow my starter just so that I have enough to use (I was given about ⅓ cup of starter). What would be considered excess?
We usually end up with extra starter when we take a break from baking bread, but keep feeding our starter. Since a starter at room temperature should be fed every day, it’s pretty easy to build up excess. I would say anything more than 2 cups is definitely extra. Though I’ll admit, we usually just make sourdough waffles or pizza when we have too much starter. This is also a really great recipe and we sometimes save up our extra starter for this.