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.