Use up your discarded starter in this quick and easy Sourdough Biscuit recipe. Buttery, flaky and full of flavor, these are made with sour cream and scallions. Vegan adaptable with a video!
If there is something “past” that needs to be seen or healed back into wholeness, it will arise in the present experience. We do not have to dig up pebbles from a streambed.
Dorothy Hunt
These flaky buttery Sourdough Biscuits are studded with scallions and have the best texture and flavor. A great way to use up that sourdough discard! If I’m being truthful they are pretty dangerous to have around, because it’s impossible not to devour them once they are made. So be warned!
Sourdough Biscuits |60-second Video
This is for those of you who are ready to do something with your sourdough discard, or sourdough starter in addition to making the Sourdough Bread-which I keep hearing is working out for you! So happy and excited for you! A true feat! Hooray!
Want more sourdough discard recipes? Check out Sourdough Waffles, Sourdough Pancakes, and Sourdough Scones!
Table of Contents
- Sourdough Biscuits |60-second Video
- Why you will love these Sourdough Discard Biscuits
- Sourdough Biscuit Recipe Ingredients
- How To Make Sourdough Biscuits
- How to serve Sourdough Biscuits
- How to store Sourdough Discard Biscuits
- Sourdough Biscuit FAQS
- More Sourdough Discard Recipes
- You May Also Enjoy
- Sourdough Biscuits Recipe
Why you will love these Sourdough Discard Biscuits
- Flavorful: Sourdough biscuits have a distinct tangy flavor that adds depth and complexity to your ordinary biscuit recipe.
- Flaky Texture: The combination of butter and sourdough gives these biscuits a light and flaky texture that is absolutely irresistible.
- Easy to Make: With just a few simple ingredients and minimal steps, you can have freshly baked sourdough biscuits on your table in no time.
- Use Up Sourdough Discard: If you’ve been maintaining a sourdough starter, this recipe is a great way to use up your discard instead of wasting it. It gives a beautiful sourdough tang to your baked goods and adds nutrition! It’s a win-win situation!
- Versatile: Sourdough biscuits can be enjoyed on their own, as a side dish with soups and stews, or even as a base for sandwiches. They’re incredibly versatile and can complement a variety of meals.
Sourdough Biscuit Recipe Ingredients
- All-Purpose Flour (or bread flour): Make sure to fluff the flour, spoon it into the measuring cup, and level it off to ensure accurate measurements.
- Salt: If you’re using salted butter, you can use a slightly smaller amount of salt in the recipe.
- Baking Powder: This helps the biscuits rise and become light and fluffy.
- Unsalted Butter (or vegan butter): Cut the cold butter into small slices to create uneven crumbs in the dough.
- Chopped Scallions or Chives (optional): These add a delicious flavor to the biscuits. Feel free to use either scallions or chives based on your preference.
- Sourdough Starter discard: You’ll need 3/4 cup of sourdough discard or unfed sourdough starter for this recipe. If using discard, make sure it has been kept in the fridge for 7-10 days without feeding.
- Sour Cream (or vegan sour cream, buttermilk, or yogurt): Sour cream gives the biscuits a lovely flavor when combined with the scallions. However, you can use alternative options like vegan sour cream, buttermilk, or yogurt if desired.
See the recipe card below for a full list of ingredients and measurements.
How To Make Sourdough Biscuits
- In a large bowl, start with butter, flour, salt and baking powder. Use your fingers and break apart into uneven crumbs, no bigger than a pea. Add scallions if you like, or chives are nice too.
2. Mix 3/4 cup starter with 1/2 cup sour cream. You can also use yogurt, vegan yogurt, vegan sour cream, or buttermilk. The sour cream really gives a lovely flavor here with the scallions- just sayin’. 🙂
3. Combine and stir into a shaggy ball. Place onto a lightly floured surface. Sprinkle with flour.
4. Knead twice- for like 2 seconds. Pat flat into a 3/4 inch rectangle. Then fold up into thirds like an envelope. Pat it down and repeat 2 times. The third time, pat the folded “envelope” into a thick rectangle 5 by 9 inches and about 1 1/2 inches thick. This folding creates tender layers.
5. Using a biscuit cutter, or sharp knife, cut the biscuit dough into 6 pieces. Place onto a parchment paper lined baking sheet, and bake until golden brown, about 20 -25 minutes. Internal temp should reach 205F.
How to serve Sourdough Biscuits
These flaky Sourdough Biscuits are perfect for making breakfast sandwiches-stuff with an egg, turkey bacon, tomato and arugula. We also love them served with soups or stews, like our Homemade Tomato Soup or our Beef Stew.
How to store Sourdough Discard Biscuits
Store the biscuits wrapped in a kitchen towel or ziplock bag on the counter for 4 days, wrap tightly and refrigerate for up to 7 days, or freeze for up to 3 months.
Sourdough Biscuit FAQS
Sourdough Starter is often referred to as “wild yeast”, made from flour and water and the wild yeast in the air around us,and it is typically used as the “yeast” when baking Sourdough Bread. The sourdough “discard” – the part of the starter that often goes to waste- can be used to make flavorful biscuits, waffles and pancakes.
Keep sourdough discard in the fridge for 7-10 days without feeding. Don’t feed the “discard” (only feed the starter that you plan to use for bread). Use the discard up in sourdough pancakes and sourdough waffles. Yes, you can add to the discard.
Yes! Simply take some out of the jar and feed it fresh water and flour.
It is most likely from expired or old baking powder. Also make sure your oven is fully preheated.
More Sourdough Discard Recipes
My favorite biscuit ever!!!! Flakey, flavorful and so easy.
You May Also Enjoy
Enjoy! Such a great way to use up your sourdough starter or discard!
Print
Sourdough Biscuits Recipe
- Prep Time: 15
- Cook Time: 25
- Total Time: 40 minutes
- Yield: 6
- Category: baked
- Method: baked
- Cuisine: northwest
- Diet: Vegetarian
Description
An easy recipe for Sourdough Biscuits with scallions using discard or sourdough starter. These buttery biscuits can be made in 45 minutes!
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cup (180g) All-Purpose Flour (or bread flour) , fluffed, spooned and leveled
- 1 teaspoon salt (use a little less if using salted butter)
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 8 tablespoons unsalted, cold butter (or use vegan butter), cut into 1/4-inch slices. (113.5 grams) See notes!
- 1/4–1/2 cup chopped scallions or chives (optional, of course)
- 3/4 cup (170g) discard or sourdough starter, unfed
- 1/2 cup sour cream (or sub vegan sour cream, buttermilk or yogurt)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 425F
- In a medium bowl, mix flour, salt and baking powder.
- Work in the cut cold butter into the flour using your fingers until it is unevenly crumbly, with the biggest crumbs the size of peas. Mix in the scallions if using.
- Place 3/4 cup starter and 1/2 cup sour cream in a bowl and mix with a fork ( it doesn’t have to be perfectly mixed together).
- Pour this into the flour mixture and using a fork, mix until the dough comes together into a very shaggy ball.
- Place the ball on a well-floured surface, sprinkle with flour and knead gently just to incorporate ( for 5 seconds- don’t over knead). Pat into a 6 x 10-inch rectangle. Fold up the sides into thirds like a tri-fold envelope and pat again into a 6 x10 inch rectangle. Fold up the sides into thirds again. Re-flour your work surface, adding more if needed. Pat into an 8 x 5-inch rectangle about 1 1/2 inches tall. Cut into 6 equal pieces.
- Place on a parchment-lined sheet pan and bake for 20-25 minutes. Check at 15-20 minutes, rotating pan if necessary. Keep baking until biscuits are beautifully golden and internal temp reaches 205F.
Notes
A friend of mine makes this with 3/4 and sometimes 1/2 the butter- and it still turns out. A little less flakey but still pretty good.
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 biscuit
- Calories: 291
- Sugar: 0.6 g
- Sodium: 408.5 mg
- Fat: 18.4 g
- Saturated Fat: 11.3 g
- Carbohydrates: 27.4 g
- Fiber: 1.1 g
- Protein: 4.8 g
- Cholesterol: 47.4 mg
Came out perfect – tall and crumbly, with a perfect taste and crust. Thank you!!
Wonderful. I tried this recipe because I needed a recipe to use up discarded sourdough starter. This is definitely a keeper. I didn’t change up the recipe at all.
Hi Sylvia. I was so excited to find your sour dough starter tutorial. I’m on my 3rd attempt to get this starter going. Everything is good until I reach day 3. My starter stops rising and all I get is watery dough. There are bubbles but nothing else. This last batch I’ve decided to keep going. I added whole wheat flour last night but no rise and slide. I’m discouraged. I live in Florida but keep my house at 70-72 degrees. Yesterday I fed it 3 times because it would just become liquid to the point I could pour it out of the jar. I’ve got the Weck jars just like yours. Help. 🙂
Hey Christine, just keep going. How about cutting back to 2 times a day. Maybe for once a day, for 1-2 days. It’s ok if it gets really really hungry, it won’t die. Give it another week. Try using different flours. ARe you using bread flour mixed with whole wheat? As a last resort, after all this try, if still no rise, try the pineapple juice. Dont give up. 😉 Keep me posted.
I also failed 3 times with Sylvia’s starter. I live in PA. I finally purchased a live starter from Breadtopia and then began using Sylvia’s recipes. Everything has been wonderful since. I
Sorry about that… but glad you got the live starter and are making the sourdough recipes!
Thanks for your recipe!
It’s easy handling!
Good smelling,the taste is very good!
This is absolutely the best biscuit recipe I’ve ever had or made! Made it twice in less than a week and can’t wait to make it again. This last batch I cut them smaller so I can eat more. I also love that I can use my chives from my garden and the yogurt I make in my instant pot for this recipe.
The hardest part about making these was fighting my kids off when they tried to eat them all right after they were done. These are CRAZY good!! I always feel regret tossing excess starter, and now I’ll never have to. Thank you so much for the recipe!
Thanks Donna! Glad you liked these!
Love! I didn’t have scallions in the fridge, so I threw in chopped garlic, sundried tomatoes and red onions, instead
Perfect!
Wowza
That sounds delicious
I’ll have to try those additions next time
The taste was amazing. But the only thing which I am confused is the I side part turned like a bread while the upper was hard crust. Is that how it should be ? Also should I freeze them after baking it ?
You can freeze if you like. Was the dough very crumbly? I wonder if they needed more moisture.
Wonderful recipe! I did add a teaspoon of bloomed yeast to ensure a good rise and gave it a butter wash. They were tasty, soft, pillowy, buttery and amazing!
Yum! They turned out great! I think I want to do jalapeño and cheddar next time! Great way to use my sourdough discard
What is bloomed yeast?
So so so good. I didn’t have scallions but I added some tiny cubes of smoked white cheddar. I brushed the tops with butter and sprinkled sea salt on top before baking. They were AMAZING. The flavor of the sourdough is incredible.
Next time I won’t flatten the dough as much after the envelope fold, and will heap the teaspoons of baking powder so I can get taller, mightier biscuits.
Fantastic!
Made these this morning and man were they good. Didn’t have any chives or green onion so I added 1/2 c cheddar cheese and 3 cranks on my pepper grinder for a cheddar and black pepper biscuit.
Yuuumm!
These were easy and so delicious. Thanks for sharing your gift of cooking.
We love this biscuit recipe, very easy and it gets better every time I make it. Thank you.
Great to hear!
Perfect way to use my sourdough starter. My whole family loved these biscuits.
Awesome! great to hear! 🙌
These biscuits are AMAZING! They’re incredible and buttery fresh out of the oven, and the ones that made it to the next day were great for sopping up gravy at breakfast. My go to biscuit recipe now.
Yay!🙌
Changed my biscuit recipe to this one ,these are delicious and I can’t even let them cool off before I’m eating one right out of the oven. I did add a butter egg wash topping and it makes them really buttery and brown !@
Awesome!
This is my go to biscuit recipe, they are to die for. I can barely contain myself once the smell starts to waft from the oven – heavenly!
Delicious as published with the scallions. I might try a sweeter version with cinnamon and brown sugar or blueberries.
I added fresh, chopped rosemary and grated asiago cheese to this recipe. They are flakey and incredibly delicious!
Yummmmm!
Hi! Made this the other day it turned out so good! I was wondering if i can freeze the sourdough biscuits? If i can, should i freeze unbaked biscuits or baked ones? Thanks!!
I would freeze baked biscuits. 🙂
What a great way to enjoy sourdough while waiting for the starter to develop! I baked these with fresh rosemary and they were crazy good (paired with your chilled beet soup). I also allowed the biscuits to “proof” before popping them into the oven. Ended up with 10 flakey puffs. And no tummy trouble either.
Love it, thanks!
Holy SMOKES! These are some darned good biscuits. I’m Southern and have grown up eating biscuits so for me to say this (think biscuit snob) is a big dealio. My kids and I just made this this morning and cannot stop munching on them. They are flaky, crunchy on the outside, so soft and delectable on the inside. Wow. I did add some sharp cheddar but other than that followed the recipe to a T. Thanks this is the bomb!
Thanks, they are dangerous. 🙂
YUM!!! I made these today with my discard and they are delicious!! Thank you so much!! 🙂
They are a little too delicious. 🙂 Dangerous around here! 😂