Chocolate has been shown to affect your mood positively. After eating chocolate, serotonin is released, and it helps stabilize the mood. So if you need the ultimate comfort food in the form of a cake, the best choice must be a chocolate brownie. This is my sourdough brownies recipe for fudgy brownies with discard.
There are commonly two types of brownies: cakey and fudgy, and people seem to have a specific preference. My favorite is the fudgy brownie, which you will see here today.
If enough people ask for a sourdough cakey brownie, I may develop a recipe.
If you are just here for the recipe, you can press the button underneath to be automagically transported to the recipe:
Jump to Recipe Jump to VideoThe history of brownies
Like most beloved food items, brownies go back a long time, and their history is riddled with made-up stories and legends.
One such story goes: A socialite called Bertha Palmer, whose husband owned a prominent Chicago hotel called Palmer House Hotel, asked one of the hotel’s pastry chefs for a confection for the ladies attending the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition.
It was supposed to be smaller than a cake and able to be included in a lunchbox. The result was the Palmer House Brownie with walnuts and an apricot glaze. It is served to this day at the hotel.
This first known printed version of a brownie recipe was published in 1899 in Machias Cookbook. They were called “Brownie’s Food”.
Brownies are loved to this day and are made at home as a huge favorite worldwide.
The batter composition in this sourdough brownies recipe
This batter uses melted chocolate and cocoa powder, which helps give it that deep, dark chocolate flavor that’s important for a great brownie.
My thanks go to Adam Ragusea for figuring out that the secret to getting that glossy papery skin on top of a brownie lies in using icing sugar because it dissolves faster into the batter, so that’s why I use icing sugar.
The rest of the ingredients are lots of delicious butter, eggs, vanilla, and a bit of all-purpose flour for a bit of structure.
Weight | Ingredient | Baker's Percentage |
---|---|---|
225g | butter, salted | 346.2% |
250g | dark chocolate | 384.6% |
10g | vanilla extract | 15.4% |
45g | cocoa powder | 69.2% |
100g | egg, whole | 153.8% |
300g | powdered sugar | 461.5% |
65g | all-purpose flour | 100% |
5g | salt | 7.7% |
200g | starter (100% hydration) | 307.7% |
If you want to play around with the recipe, you can do so here in my Bread Calculator.
But my pan isn’t 9 by 9 inches?
If your pan isn’t 9 by 9 inches, custom Brownie CalculatorTM comes to your rescue.
Just fill in the size of your pan, and you will get a custom link to my Bread Calculator with the right proportions needed for your specific pan:
The conclusion of this fudgy sourdough brownies recipe
So, this brownie recipe is a very moist and fudgy cake with a lot of rich chocolate flavor and complex fermented notes. How does it deliver?
Well, I went through quite a few iterations of this brownie before ending up on this final recipe.
It has the perfect balance of deep, dark chocolate flavor, the right amount of salt, an incredibly fudgy texture, and just enough fermented taste to bring the whole cake to another level.
If you love brownies, give this recipe a go. I am sure you will not be disappointed.
Please share this recipe for fudgy sourdough brownies on social media
This is my recipe for fudgy sourdough brownies. If you like the recipe, please consider sharing it with like-minded bread lovers on social media.
If you make it and post it on Instagram, please tag me as @foodgeek.dk so I can see it. That would make me very happy.
Fudgy Brownies with Sourdough Discard
Equipment
Ingredients
- 225 g butter
- 250 g 70% dark chocolate
- 45 g cocoa powder regular or dutched
- 5 g table salt
- 10 g vanilla extract
- 100 g large eggs approx. 2 eggs
- 300 g icing sugar
- 200 g stirred down discard
- 65 g all-purpose flour
Instructions
Heat oven
- Heat your oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas Mark 4.
Mix the batter
- Melt butter and dark chocolate in the microwave. Pour the mixture into a medium-sized bowl.
- Sift in cocoa powder and mix until it's combined.
- Add table salt and vanilla extract and mix it in.
- Add the eggs one at a time and mix thoroughly after each egg.
- Sift in icing sugar and mix it in.
- Add the discard and mix it in.
- Add all-purpose flour and fold it in.
Prepare the pan
- Then grab a nine by nine inch pan, add baking paper and pour the batter into the pan.
- Tap it against the counter to spread the batter out into the corners.
Bake brownie
- Put it in the oven for 30 minutes.
- Test that a toothpick comes out clean before removing it from the oven and put it on a wire rack to cool.
- After about 15 minutes, you can take it out of the pan and let it cool completely on the wire rack.
- Then you can cut it up into pieces. Whatever size you find appropriate.
I just made these sourdough brownies and they are amazing! It is Mother’s Day here in the UK next week so I will be baking another batch specially for my Mum. Thanks for the great recipe Sune – love your YouTube channel!
I plan to give this recipe a go but I have a couple questions I was hoping you could answer:
-why salted butter?
-did you use unsweetened chocolate and if not what percentage of sugar did your chocolate have?
Thanks in advance!
Stephanie
I made your Fudgy Sourdough Brownies and they were DELICIOUS! Best brownies I ever had. Such a deep dark chocolate flavor, with a bit of a tang. Very rich. They froze well, too. Thank you so much for creating that recipe!
Best regards from Rhode Island,
Mary
Hello fellow food geeks,
There isn’t enough commenting on this site!
I tried this recipe and just a minute ago pulled them out of the oven. The house smells absolutely amazing. To appease my eldest daughter who will likely eat most of these, I subbed dark choc chips for milk choc.
The rest of the recipe was kept exactly the same, as measured by an accurate scale. Oven rack was placed in the upper third of the oven where most of the heat is or should be. The cook time to have toothpicks come out dry was closer to 70 minutes at 350°. If anyone else tries this, they will need some babysitting if you experience this as well to not become overcooked or burnt.
Cheers
Whoa! I made these tonight. So delicious, fudgey and rich. Best brownies, ever. Worth every calorie! 😋
Thank you so much for the yummy recipe!
Hi Sune, I enjoy your blog! Put my name on the cakey brownie list please! Greetings from South Africa
You deserve every star and more for these MARVELOUS Fudgy Sourdough Brownies! They are perfection, and even better the next day! They are rich and moist with a nice tang to balance them out. They’re decadent without being heavy, and the first bite me want the whole pan! Could definitely tell they were dark chocolate in the best way possible, and the texture is delightful! Worth saving starter discard just for these delightful treats! Thank you for another superior recipe with an excellent video to boot!