Sourdough English Muffins
Today I cooked my first batch of sourdough english muffins. They. Were. Delicious. They came out looking beautiful and puffy and distinctly delicious with their sourdough flavour and chewy crumb texture.
Let’s paint a picture here, I’m very much in the camp of ‘if its takes too much effort and the supermarket sells them – why bother?’ I umm’d and ahh’d a lot about giving these a go because well… I have two preschoolers – enough said. However, I do like the sour taste and chewy crumb of sourdough bread products and I do like challenging myself. Also, the supermarket I shop at doesn’t sell sourdough english muffins so its like a treat!
I started this recipe the day before I actually cooked the sourdough english muffins and made sure that the sourdough starter was really active. To ensure I had lots of active yeasty friends in my sourdough starter, I fed my starter in the morning at about 11am and begun this recipe 4 hours later when I knew it would be at its most active.
Inspiration from the following blogs/videos (thank you internet people) resulted in this recipe which I found I could fit into and around my daily chores without too much trouble. I especially love that I managed to use the resulting english muffins for two (2) separate meals – fantastic, can’t complain about that.
Culinary Exploration – https://youtu.be/UtqZom95NFo
Amy Duska – https://youtu.be/euOSCA4UvRw
Farmhouse On Boone – https://www.farmhouseonboone.com/how-to-make-sourdough-english-muffins
Unfortunately, I didn’t film a process video – I might in the future (and post a link here) as I suspect I’ll be making these again.
Filling Suggestions
To make a meal of these, I like to cut one in half, toast it; fry up some scrambled eggs; grab some salad leaves from the garden; slice a bit of cheese; lay these fillings on top of one half of a toasted english muffin, top it off with some beetroot chutney before squishing the other half on top. This makes a yummy lunch.
For breakfast, these would be perfect for creating the classic bacon and egg english muffin by sandwiching a couple of rashers of bacon and a fried egg in between an english muffin that has been cut in half and toasted. Alternatively, create eggs benedict by cutting an english muffin in half, toasting it in butter then topping it off with blanched spinach, poached egg and hollandaise sauce.
Of course there are plenty of other options for fillings, these are just suggestions that came to mind which I know would work well with this sourdough english muffins.
Good Things to Know
When making these sourdough english muffins, leaving the dough to prove overnight helps to give these muffins the distinctive sour taste of sourdough. It gives the natural yeast time to do its work. You can shape these after the 4 hour rest period then begin cooking them after resting for another hour. They will still be delicious, just not as as rich in soury flavour.
Weighing each dough ball allows you to make a uniform looking batch of sourdough english muffins.
Also, do not skimp on the semolina because by dipping it in the semolina and giving it a good coating, it does a great job of preventing the dough from sticking to the pan when it comes to the cooking stage.
I use cast iron pans because the weight of the pan ensures a flat surface and even heat distribution but if you don’t have one, any other oven proof pan could be used. If you don’t have an oven proof pan, toast for 4 minutes on each side in the pan then transfer to a preheated oven tray for the 10 minutes oven bake.
As you remove the pan from the oven, you may find that there is little colour or caramelisation on the top or bottom of the engish muffins. In this case just pop the stove back on and toast them for a little longer.
Onto the recipe…
Sourdough English Muffins
Ingredients:
10g salt
280g water
180g active sourdough starter
500g flour
semolina
Method:
In a large bowl, dissolve the salt into the water – use room temperature water.
Add sourdough starter and mix thoroughly.
Add flour and mix until just combined, doesn’t need to be a nice fancy dough ball just make sure its one shaggy heap of dough.
Cover with cling film and leave for 1 hour at room temperature or in a warm place if you are in a cold environment/climate.
Lightly flour a work surface and knead dough until a nice smooth dough ball is formed – this took a bit of effort and a good 10 minutes of kneading to get it the consistency I wanted, so get ready for a workout (or use a stand mixer with a dough hook – I wish I had thought of that earlier!).
Return to bowl, cover with cling film and leave for 4 hours at room temperature. Then place in the fridge overnight.
Once it’s been proving overnight, remove from the fridge and divide the dough into pieces. I weighed mine to be about 100g each and got 9 pieces.
Knead, roll, shape each dough ball into a ball then dip the bottom in semolina and place into an oven tray lined with non-stick baking paper.
Leave at room temperature for 1 hour.
Preheat oven to 180 degrees celcius (160 degrees celcius on fan bake).
Heat a cast iron skillet to medium heat.
Dip the tops and bottoms of 3-4 muffins in semolina and place into the cast iron skillet. Toast for 4 minutes on each side of each muffin then place into oven for 10 minutes.
Repeat for remaining english muffins.
I love eating my english muffins toasted in a little butter in a cast iron pan – simple but deliciously addictive.
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