Sourdough English Muffins

 

Homemade 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.

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. 

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.

 

Egg, Salad Greens and beetroot Chutney Sourdough English Muffin

Enjoy!

Mel Crafting.