I got all fancy here at Casa Radiance for breakfast today!  I had pulled my sourdough starter (aka Breadipus Rex) out of the fridge a couple days ago to see if it was still alive. Truth be told, I forgot about it for a few months!  I thought it was dead, but I fed it and it showed some signs of life, so I left it out of the fridge and kept refreshing it for a couple days and it was alive and kicking again.  I realize this starter is over 2 years old now!  I don’t use it that much, but will feed it occasionally.  It’s the forgotten pet 😀

Anyway, I wanted to try something different and saw this recipe for sourdough crepes and thought that would be easy enough for breakfast! 

Crepes are really easy. They seem fancy, but just are a super thin pancake.  This recipe only took 4 ingredients:

Okay, I know the picture has just 3, but pretend you see milk sitting next to these items.  It was pre coffee when I did this.

• 1/2 cup fed sourdough starter 100% hydration **
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon butter, melted
• 1 to 2 tablespoons of milk

** 100% hydration means the starter is made with equal parts by weight of flour and water. If you use more flour than water, that is a stiff starter.

The best pan to use for crepes is an 8 inch nonstick pan.  You don’t need a fancy crepe pan. It just needs to have slightly curved sides.  While you mix the ingredients, you want to get your pan hot over medium to medium high heat.

First, stir your starter to get all the bubbles out.  Then measure out 1/2 cup and add it to the cup of your mini blender along with the egg and melted butter.  You could do this with a whisk if you don’t have a blender, but it’s just easier this way.

I also tossed in some cinnamon here, just for kicks.  Blend well and then stir in 1 to 2 tablespoons of milk to thin out the batter.  How much milk will depend a little on how wet your starter is. You want it really thin so it spreads around the pan and doesn’t mound up like it would for a pancake.

Spray the heated pan with cooking spray and pour in about 3 tablespoons of batter.  You want to swirl the pan around to distribute the batter all the way around the pan and up the sides.  This is why you need thin batter.  This was a hard picture to take, I have to say.

You can kind of see how runny the batter is and how it is swirling towards the edges.  It cooks very fast because the crepes are thin.

In about a minute, the crepe edges will start to pull from the pan like this:

Now is the time to flip. You can try with your fingers or just use a spatula:

This needs maybe 20 seconds on the other side:

Then just slide to a waiting plate. I slide mine out and then fold them over. 

You could leave them unfolded and fill and roll them, but I am kind of lazy. Repeat until the batter is gone.  It doesn’t take very long at all to do all the crepes.  I got 5 crepes out of this and really the batter could have been a bit thinner and made 6.

I topped mine with my blueberry sauce and a spoon of ricotta.  Plus some cinnamon because I got all fancy!

These were quite good. Normally crepes don’t have much flavor to them, but these had a definite complexity to them. My starter is pretty tangy because it is 2 years old.  I think I will call them sophisticrepes!  These could be used for sweet or savory purposes.  You may want to add a little sweetener to these to help balance the tang if you are used to sweeter breakfasts.

I would hazard a guess that the crepes are about 220 calories or so, not including any topping.

I was a little nervous about trying to make english muffins, and I really don’t know why because they weren’t that hard!  I did want to use my sourdough starter, though.

You can use this recipe with yeast if you don’t have/want to use sourdough starter.  The technique is the same once the dough is made.

I pulled my starter out of the fridge and fed it a few times to make sure it was still alive – and it was!  So, I was set for this recipe to try.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup sourdough starter (fed and stirred)
• 1 cup of 1% milk
• 2 to 2-1/2 cups of flour
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking soda (not powder)
• cornmeal for dusting

The night before you want to make the muffins, take your well-fed starter and stir it to remove the bubbles.  Then measure out a 1/2 cup.  This is Breadipus Rex!  You do have to name your starter, you know.

In a bowl, mix the 1/2 cup of starter with 1 cup of milk and 2 cups of the flour (don’t use all the flour).

Mix really well, cover with plastic wrap, and let sit overnight.

I woke up the next morning and was pleased to see there was some action overnight  😉

To this, add the 1 tablespoon of sugar, the 3/4 teaspoon of salt, and the baking soda.  Now here is where I goofed.  Since I had not had any coffee yet, I added baking powder instead of soda.  So, I decided to go ahead and also add the baking soda!  You don’t need to do this, but just to let you know it didn’t hurt anything.  Maybe it helped, too. Who knows.

Anyway, after this is mixed in, you can either turn this out on a well-floured board and knead for 5 minutes adding the remaining flour to keep the dough from being too sticky.  I dumped mine into the Kitchenaid and used the dough hook to knead.  I only needed about 1/4 cup of flour as our humidity is really low right now.  The trick with bread is to not add too much flour.  Many people put in flour until the dough is dry, which will make a heavy and dense loaf.  The dough should be slightly tacky.

After kneading, sprinkle the board well with flour.  Dust the top of the dough with more flour to roll out.

You might need to let the dough rest for 5 minutes or so to relax a little.  Flour a rolling pin and roll the dough out about almost a half inch or so.  Then use a cutter dipped in flour to make circles.  I used a drinking glass, since I don’t have a biscuit cutter.

My suggestion is to find something that is 3 to 3-1/2 inches in diameter.  This glass is only 2, maybe 2-1/2 and the muffins were smaller than I would like.  Live and learn.    Reroll the scraps and cut again.  You also can just make small dough balls and flatten them if you don’t care about the shape (which I did with the last few scraps).  Or use a pizza cutter and make square muffins.  Then you only have to roll the dough once.

Lay out a piece of parchment paper or a cookie sheet and dust it with cornmeal.  Place the little circles on this surface.

Cover these babies with plastic wrap and let sit for 45 minutes.  I am not really sure why, because they do not rise much at all.  In fact, I was wondering if they were going to turn out.

Next is to heat a griddle to medium.  And I do mean medium.  The low side of medium.  Heat management is crucial to cook these.  Once the griddle is heated, brush with oil and lay out the disks.

I really didn’t think these were going to come out since they were so flat, but they started to puff up right away!  Cook on the first side for 5 minutes or so.  This is why you want to be on the lower end of the heat or they will burn and the middle will be raw.  Heat management, people!

Carefully flip the muffins over:

Almost over done on this side.  I had to lower the heat.  Cook for another 5 minutes or so until done.  I found that a good test was to poke a fork at the side of the muffin to make sure that part was not doughy.

Cool on a cooling rack.

Now you all know to never use a knife, but to  fork split  your english muffins, right?

I poked a fork around the edges of these before bagging half of them to freeze.

Split open:

Squeeeeeee!!!!!  I was really happy to see this!  I’m feeling might proud of myself, too 

Calories for the 2 inch muffins is about 100 each.  If you do a bigger size and get 12 muffins out of the batch, they will be about 120 each.  I have to do an exact count on them, but this recipe is pretty lean.