Beyond Bread | Sweet Sourdough Baking

I've been asked before if you can bake sweet breads with sourdough. The answer is yes. But you can also go beyond bread. Sourdough pancakes are delicious, and you can also use your starter in everything from cakes to biscuits to even pastries. Right now you might be thinking that the "sourdough" flavour would be too strong for sweet baking, but it isn't at all. In fact, if you didn't know I'd bet you wouldn't be able to tell that there was sourdough starter in these cookies.


Sweet sourdough baking is something I am only just starting to explore and I am in love. Being able to ferment the grain in my sweet baking is wonderful, and aside from the health benefits of sourdough, the sweet sourdough baking I have tried so far has been delicious.

These chocolate cookies were divine. They were soft and pillowy on the inside - an almost cake like crumb. The recipe is from Jodie of Jelly Wares although the recipe was posted on her Instagram feed. I used my 100% spelt starter in the recipe, along with spelt flour and rapadura as the sweetener. I chose peanut butter as my nut butter and the results were delicious.
These cookies have inspired me to experiment with other flavour combinations.

Another sweet sourdough recipe I have my eye on is these Sourdough Doughnuts by Nourishing Joy. As usual I will be using all spelt in them when I try them. I'm looking forward to it. Kresha also has lots of other sourdough recipes on her website so check it out!

And if you were wondering if you can make fruit buns with your sourdough this Easter - yes! If you are after a spelt recipe I recommend have a Fruit Bun recipe in my eBook Spelt Sourdough Made Simple. Like all of my sourdough recipes, the Fruit Bun recipe is designed for baking with whole spelt flour (and other variations of spelt) with no mixing in of other flours - this is truly 100% spelt sourdough. Also suitable for whole wheat flour baking.

I'd love to know if you've done any sweet baking with your sourdough starter?
If you have a favourite recipe do share below!

Happy baking this weekend,

Sarah x


This post was updated in August 2016