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Make this easy sourdough zucchini bread recipe in just a few simple steps. It’s the perfect way to use up a glut of summer zucchini. This quick bread comes together with simple pantry ingredients and is the perfect afternoon treat with a hot cup of tea! It’s the best sourdough zucchini bread you’ll ever eat, I promise!
Why You’ll Love This Recipe!
Use Up Excess Zucchini – This is one of the most useful sourdough discard recipes for using up a lot of zucchini! I love making this towards to end of summer when zucchini are plentiful and putting in the freezer.
Use Discard or Active Starter – You can make this loaf with either sourdough discard or active sourdough starter, it won’t make any difference to the final result.
Makes 2 Loaves – Why not eat one and gift one to your neighbor with some homemade butter or whipped honey cinnamon butter?
Ingredients
- Butter – I’ve used salted butter, softened at room temperature.
- Granulated Sugar – You can use brown sugar if you prefer, but it will alter the texture of the loaf and it won’t rise as much.
- Eggs – 3 large eggs are perfect, mine are at least 60g each.
- Sourdough Discard – You can actually use sourdough discard or active sourdough starter, whatever you have on hand is fine.
- Vanilla Extract
- Grated Zucchini – Use a box grater to shred your fresh zucchini. My zucchini weighed around 600g before squeezing out the moisture and 400g after squeezing out all the excess water.
- All Purpose Flour
- Baking Powder & Baking Soda
- Salt
- Cinnamon, Ginger and Nutmeg
How To Make Sourdough Zucchini Bread
The process of making sourdough zucchini bread is really very simple. I recommend creaming the butter, sugar and eggs with a stand mixer, however, you can do it by hand if you don’t have one.
Preheat your oven to 350ºF (175ºC). Prepare 2 loaf pans by coating the inside of each generously with butter (I do this even if my loaf pans are non stick). For this recipe I’ve used 2 x 1 pound USA Pan Loaf Pans – they are the same pans I use for my sourdough banana bread.
Cream the butter, sugar and eggs until light in color and nice and fluffy. It’s best to use a stand mixer with a whisk attachment or hand mixer for this step. It’s really important to cream the butter, sugar and eggs until they are really pale and fluffy before you add the sourdough starter and vanilla to the bowl.
Now add all the dry ingredients and shredded zucchini (make sure you’ve squeezed the moisture out) on top of the wet ingredients and use a spatula to gently fold it all together.
Once combined, evenly distribute the batter across your two prepared loaf pans and smooth out the tops with a spatula.
Bake the sourdough zucchini bread for around 1 hour at 350ºF (175ºC) – the time really depends on your oven. Insert a toothpick into the middle of the bread – if it comes out clean, they’re ready to come out of the oven.
Allow the sourdough zucchini bread to cool in the tins for 10 to 15 minutes before removing them from the pans and placing on a wire rack to cool. I recommend waiting a little while before you slice it. If you slice it when it’s too warm, it can be a little crumbly.
Kate’s Pro Tip
Weighing The Zucchini
I’ve used a large zucchini to make this bread (or alternatively 2 medium zucchini). Shred the zucchini, then place it into a flour sack tea towel with a pinch of salt. Leave it to sit for around 30 minutes before using the tea towel to squeeze out as much moisture as possible. If you don’t squeeze out the extra moisture, your zucchini bread will be too moist and won’t rise as much.
Add Ins For Sourdough Zucchini Bread
While this delicious sourdough zucchini bread is perfect just as it is, there are some flavor variations and inclusions you can add if you’d like to mix things up a bit. All of these additions can be added along with the dry ingredients (flour, spices etc).
- 100g of chocolate chips or chunks
- 100g of chopped pecans
- 100g of cranberries or raisins
- 100g of walnuts
- 50g of cocoa powder
- for a hit of extra veggies and some color, add a shredded carrot!
Serving Suggestions
Some ideas for serving your sourdough zucchini bread. I recommend allowing the bread to cool quite a bit as it can be too crumbly when sliced warm. Once cool, serve with:
- Salted cultured butter
- Whipped honey cinnamon butter
- Vanilla cream cheese frosting (this one from my sourdough cinnamon rolls is the best!).
How To Store and Freeze
Store this zucchini quick bread in an air-tight container at room temperature for up to 4 days. You can also store in the fridge if you prefer. Just allow it to sit at room temperature for 10 minutes before serving.
This sourdough zucchini bread freezes so well! I almost always have one in the freezer! I like to wrap it in foil and then place into a ziplock bag before freezing. Thaw at room temperature.
Other Zucchini Sourdough Recipes
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes leave the skin on zucchini when making bread. It adds great color to the bread, as well as retaining more of the nutrients of the vegetable.
No there is no need to take the seeds out of the zucchini for making bread. The seeds are rather difficult to remove from a zucchini and they are easy to grate up when shredding the zucchini for making bread.
You substitute the zucchini for shredded carrot in this sourdough zucchini bread recipe. You could also do a mix of half carrot and half zucchini. These vegetables compliment each other well.
Sourdough Zucchini Bread
Equipment
- 2 Loaf Pans (measuring 8.5 x 4.5 x 2.75)
- Hand Mixer or Stand Mixer
Ingredients
- 170 g Butter, room temp
- 250 g Sugar
- 3 Eggs, room temp
- 200 g Sourdough Starter
- 5 g Vanilla Extract
- 400 g Zucchini, (shredded – see notes)
- 390 g All Purpose Flour
- 10 g Baking Powder
- 10 g Baking Soda
- 5 g Salt
- 6 g Cinnamon, (2 tsp)
- 2 g Ginger, (1 tsp)
- 2 g Nutmeg, (½ tsp)
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 350ºF (175ºC).
- Prepare 2 loaf pans by coating the inside of each generously with butter (I do this even if my loaf pans are non stick). See notes for pan sizes.
- Cream the butter, sugar and eggs until light in color and nice and fluffy. It's best to use a stand mixer or hand mixer for steps 3 and 4 – you'll get the best result from your zucchini bread.
- Now add sourdough starter and vanilla to the creamed butter, sugar and eggs and beat until well combined.
- Now add all the dry ingredients and shredded zucchini (make sure you've squeezed the moisture out) into a separate bowl and mix until well combined and the zucchini is coated in flour.
- Now add the wet ingredients into the bowl with the dry ingredients and fold gently until combined – try not to over mix it!
- Now pour the mixture into two loaf pans that have been well greased with butter (I put 630g of mixture into each tin).
- Bake the sourdough zucchini bread for around 50 minutes at 350ºF (175ºC) (the time really depends on your oven). Insert a skewer into the middle of the bread – if it comes out clean, they're ready to come out of the oven.
- Allow the sourdough zucchini bread to cool in the tins for 10 to 15 minutes before removing them and placing on a wire rack to cool.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
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The flavor is good but it’s not moist at all. I squeezed the water from the shredded zucchini so maybe that’s why its dry. I looked at some other recipes that say not to squeeze out the water so not sure what to do. I will try baking another load and leave the excess water in the zucchini. I’m in Utah so maybe the altitude contributed to the dryness.
Just wondering if I am missing some other wet ingredients in this Sourdough Zucchini Bread recipe? There is no way that I could “pour” the mixture into my loaf pans. It was more like a very thick dough!
Is it possible to do a bench ferment or overnight cold ferment with this recipe?
Is it possible to substitute honey for the sugar in this recipe? It looks amazing, but I only use honey, dates, or sometimes other fruits to sweeten when baking for my family (no cane sugar). I’m looking into possibly utilizing coconut sugar if that might be a better option but I’ve yet to try it.
I’m embarrassed to ask… Do I cream the butter and sugar then add eggs or am I creaming them all together?
You can do it either way 🙂