Sourdough Discard Cinnamon Rolls

Use some of your sourdough discard to make these cinnamon rolls! Soft, pillowy dough that's rolled up with a delicious cinnamon sugar filling and slathered in icing. These cinnamon rolls are so delicious, and best of all, you can start this dough up to 2 days before baking the rolls.

These are adapted from Pioneer Woman's cinnamon roll recipe - which is one of my very favorites! This is scaled down to make two (9-inch) pie pans, and adapted to include sourdough starter discard.

Cinnamon rolls are SO GOOD with sourdough discard. The slightly sour flavor in the background is divine with the sweet cinnamon filling and the icing.

You can tell how loved these cinnamon rolls are at my house by the fact that there is one MISSING in these photos.

People cannot help themselves when it comes to these.

I especially love this recipe because it's so flexible. You can start the dough, then either use it immediately, or refrigerate it overnight, OR up to two days. Love it when your bread works around your schedule!

Plus, cinnamon rolls are usually holiday fare, which means you already have a lot of schedules to work around and are being pulled in a billion different directions. Just get some dough started, then bake your cinnamon rolls whenever you have the time!

The Dough

The first time I made these cinnamon rolls, I majorly miscalculated how much flour/starter to put in and ended up with a dough that was so sticky and hard to work with, I would have thrown it out had I not already melted the stick of butter for the filling. I sliced the rolls and blobbed them all into a cake pan and baked them, because why not? We don't waste butter here. And what resulted were such deliciously perfect cinnamon rolls I to this day kind of cannot believe it.

So I kept this dough slightly on the sticky side. It's not unmanageable to work with, but you will want to flour your work surface and the surface of your dough generously when rolling out! When you're eating the softest cinnamon rolls, it will have all been worth it.

The cinnamon sugar filling

I do something maybe kind of unconventional with my cinnamon roll filling that I find yields better results than the regular way of sprinkling dry cinnamon and sugar over melted butter.

First, I melt my butter. Then I take it off the heat and stir in cinnamon and sugar. You want it to be very soft and easily spreadable, but not so liquid that it will run off your dough.

Let it cool or heat it up slightly to adjust the consistency as needed, then spread over your rolled out dough.

I find doing it this way makes the filling stay in the roll better (versus leaking out of the bottom of the rolls), and is easier to do once you get the hang of it.

Sourdough Starter Discard

I sometimes joke that even if I didn't like making sourdough, I would still keep a starter so I could make discard recipes. They are so good! Using your discard in recipes imparts so much good sourdough flavor, and can help enormously in cutting down waste!

Instead of discarding my "discard," I pour it into a container that I keep in my fridge. Anytime I want to make a discard recipe (or when my fridge container is getting too full), I pour out however much I need for the recipe.

Since I keep my discard in the fridge, it is pretty compact and liquidy. If you're using freshly discarded discard, you will want to use the same amount by weight listed in the recipe.

Making ahead

You have a few options for making these ahead of time, and I will list them in my preferred order:

1. Make the dough and refrigerate (up to 2 days) until ready to use.
2. Bake the cinnamon rolls but don't ice. You can cool them completely then cover and keep on the counter. When you're ready to eat, pop the pan of cinnamon rolls in the oven at 325 for 10 minutes, until warmed through, then top with icing.
3. Bake and ice the cinnamon rolls. Cover and store them in the fridge. When you're ready to eat, bake at 325 for 15-20 minutes, until heated through.