Chocolate Sourdough Donut Recipe - East Pine Home (2024)

Chocolate Baked Sourdough Donuts

Is it a sourdough breakfast or a sourdough dessert? These delicious donuts are a treat no matter what time of day. This sourdough doughnut recipe is the most simple you will ever find! No hot oil, fermenting, donut cutter, or frying pan is needed. These are baked cake doughnuts that use sourdough discard. They are fluffy, light, and have a rich chocolate flavor.

What is sourdough discard?

If you want to know more about discard we need a brief on what sourdough starter is. Sourdough bread doesn’t use commercial yeast to rise, it uses a sourdough starter. Sourdough starter is in a nutshell is about a 50% water and 50% flour mixture that collects wild yeast in the air. This starter needs to be “fed” daily and it will bubbly up and rise. When it reaches its peak it is ready to rise and ferment bread. But if you miss that window your starter will not be strong enough to rise and hole up the dough. This flat deflated starter is called “discard”. It is dubbed that because it usually gets discarded into the trash so you can refeed your starter. Doesn’t that sound wasteful? So this is where sourdough discard recipes come into play. No bulk fermentation and fuss but you still get that yummy sourdough flavour.

Back to the homemade donuts!

These chocolate donuts are basically cake donuts and will need a donut pan of some kind. These are not cut-out donuts and not yeast so you don’t need to pull out a cookie cutter or deal with a first rise. All you need is a big bowl like the bowl of your stand mixer and a piping bag. Once that ripe sourdough starter is deflated it’s time for some sourdough discard donuts.

It’s no surprise I love all things sourdough. But I am not someone who thinks ahead so more often than not I feed my starter thinking I will make and bake up a storm only to get derailed and be left with a tub of flattened sourdough discard. If you don’t already have an active sourdough starter you can check out my blog all about it HERE. If you are still in the beginning stages of your starter and don’t want to waste the discard this is the perfect recipe for you!

Here is what you will need:

• All Purpose Flour
• Sugar
• Baking Powder
• Cocoa Powder
• Salt
• Vegetable oil /Coconut Oil
• Sourdough discard
• Whole Milk
• Vanilla Extract
• Large Bowl
• Silicone or tin donut molds*
• Cooling rack/ Wire rack (optional)

*Bakers note: If you don’t have either of these on hand you can line a baking sheet with parchment paper and make donut holes or use a mini muffin tin.

​Sourdough Donut Recipe:

First thing; in a large bowl, mix your dry ingredients flour, sugar, baking powder, cocoa powder, and salt. Whisk until combined. Next, add vegetable oil. sourdough discard, whole milk, and vanilla extract. Stir until combined and scraping the sides of the bowl, stir, to create your donut dough. Scoop batter into a piping bag and snip the corner with some scissors. On a cookie sheet pipe batter into a silicone donut mold. You can use cooking spray and a tin donut mold if you have one.

Bake at 350 for about 16 minutes depending on your oven. When they are finished let them completely cool on a wire rack for best results.

If you want to eat them as is go ahead but if you’re feeling fancy you can melt chocolate chips in a small pot on the stove or in the microwave in a small bowl with some coconut or vegetable oil (canola oil will work too) and dip your donuts in face down. Let cool in the fridge until the glaze is set. You can also toss them in a bag with powdered sugar!

These doughnuts are a tasty treat and a perfect way to use up some of that sourdough discard.

If you want more sourdough recipes CLICK HERE

Sourdough starter recipe CLICK HERE

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