These Baked Sourdough Pumpkin Donuts are soft, fluffy and full of cozy pumpkin spice flavor, all without frying or waiting for dough to ferment. Made with 200 g of pumpkin puree and sourdough discard, these are cake-style donuts that can be mixed, baked and ready to eat in well under an hour.
They’re perfect when you want a quick fall sourdough bake that feels a little special without turning into an all-day project. Because remember your sourdough starter is not the boss of your schedule!
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Why You’ll Love This Recipe
Baked, Not Fried – No pot of hot oil, thermometer or messy cleanup. These pumpkin donuts are baked in a donut pan until soft and fluffy.
Ready in Under an Hour – From mixing the batter to enjoying a warm pumpkin donut, this is an easy sourdough recipe you can make when you want something delicious without a long timeline. These are cake-style sourdough donuts, so there’s no waiting around for dough to rise or proof. Mix the batter, fill your donut pan and bake.
Perfect for Sourdough Discard – This is a great way to use sourdough discard straight from the fridge. There’s no need to feed your starter first.
Ingredients
- Sourdough Discard – You can use unfed sourdough discard for these donuts. Because the donuts use baking powder and baking soda for their rise, you don’t need to wait for the starter to ferment the batter.
- Pumpkin Puree – You’ll need 200 g of pumpkin puree for this recipe. You can use canned pumpkin puree or homemade pumpkin puree, as long as it has a thick consistency. Make sure you’re using plain pumpkin puree rather than pumpkin pie filling. The pumpkin does more than add flavor here. It also contributes moisture and helps give these donuts their soft, tender cake-like texture.
- Brown Sugar & Granulated Sugar – Brown sugar works particularly well with pumpkin because its deeper caramel flavor complements the warm spices. It also helps keep cake-style donuts soft.
- Egg
- Butter
- All-purpose Flour
- Baking Powder & Baking Soda
- Pumpkin Spice, Vanilla & Salt – Pumpkin itself has a fairly mild flavor, so the warm spices are what really make these donuts taste like fall.
How To Make Baked Sourdough Pumpkin Donuts
This is such an easy fall recipe to make! The batter can be made in a single bowl, with no mixers or anything fancy. You just need to whisk together the wet ingredients, before adding the dry ingredients on top and bringing it together Resist the temptation to add extra pumpkin puree just because you have a little left over. Pumpkin contains plenty of moisture, and adding too much can make baked donuts heavy or gummy.into a batter.
Be careful not to overmix. Over mixing can develop too much gluten and give you heavier, chewier donuts rather than the soft cake-like texture we’re aiming for.
You want the batter thick enough that you can pipe it into a donut tray. A thicker batter also helps the donuts hold their shape while baking.
Place the donut batter into a piping bag or large ziplock bag and pipe the donut batter into your donut trays. Try not to overfill the donut cavities because otherwise the donuts can rise over the centre hole and lose their classic donut shape.
Bake the donuts for around 25 minutes or until the tops spring back when lightly pressed. Once you’ve removed them from the oven, you’ll need to dip each donut into a bowl of melted butter and then into a pumpkin spiced sugar mixture. Set the sugared donuts onto a wire rack to set.
If you’d prefer a glazed donut, you can use the delicious maple glaze from these sourdough pumpkin oatmeal cookies.
Kate’s Pro Tip
Got Leftover Pumpkin Puree?
If you’ve opened a can of pumpkin to make this recipe and you don’t want to waste the leftovers, why not use it to make a batch of these sourdough pumpkin waffles. This recipe uses exactly 225 grams of pumpkin puree.
How To Store + Freeze
These baked sourdough pumpkin donuts are at their absolute best when they’re eaten fresh, shortly after they’ve been coated in sugar. If you have leftovers, store them in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days. Because baked donuts naturally lose some of their softness as they sit, I recommend refreshing them before serving if they’re more than a day old. You can follow the air fryer instructions in this recipe for sourdough apple cider sourdough donuts.
For longer storage, you can also freeze the donuts. For the best result, freeze them before coating in melted butter and cinnamon sugar, then thaw and refresh before coating and serving.
Baked Sourdough Pumpkin Donuts
Equipment
- Donut Tray
Ingredients
Wet Ingredients
- 100 g Sourdough Discard
- 200 g Pumpkin Puree
- 100 g Brown Sugar
- 1 Egg
- 60 g Butter, (melted)
- 5 g Vanilla
Dry Ingredients
- 250 g All-purpose Flour
- 60 g Granulated Sugar
- 6 g Baking Powder
- 3 g Baking Soda
- 6 g Pumpkin Spice
- 3 g Salt
Cinnamon Sugar Coating
- 150 g Granulated Sugar
- 8 g Pumpkin Spice
- 120 g Butter, (melted)
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 180ºC (350ºF). Spray a 12 hole donut tray with cooking spray or grease with butter.
- In a large bowl, add the wet ingredients and whisk until very smooth.
- On top of the wet ingredients, add the dry ingredients and use a spatula to bring it together into a smooth batter.
- Add the batter to a large piping bag and pipe the donut batter into your prepared donut tray.
- Bake the donuts for 25 minutes at 180ºC (350ºF) or until golden brown in color and firm to touch.
- Remove the donuts from the oven and tip them out of the donut tray. Dip each donut into the melted butter and then into the spiced sugar mixture. Place on a wire cooling rack to set.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
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