Sourdough English Muffins

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Put that sourdough starter to good use and make your own sourdough English muffins from scratch, with all the nooks and crannies you love about the store-bought ones!

Raise your hand if you started a sourdough starter during stay-at-home orders.

Ok, now raise your other hand if you haven’t made anything with it other than a loaf of sourdough bread, if that.

Mmmkay, so there may be some of you with one hand up, probably very likely two, and you two-handers is who I’m here for today.

Everyone else, I’m here for you, too… But if you’ve yet to actually use the sourdough starter you so enthusiastically brought to fruition, today is your day, one thousand percent.

But before I get to the goods, we’ve got to establish a couple of things, and the first thing on that list is addressing exactly what a sourdough starter is, for those of you who may not actually know or those of you who got here and are like “uhh… A what?”

WHAT IS A SOURDOUGH STARTER?

A sourdough starter is a living culture of naturally occurring yeast and bacteria that you can use to leaven, or give rise to, bread.

You can purchase a starter or start one yourself from scratch, which is what manyyyy folks decided to do in the last few months because HELLO, stuck inside and HELLO, fun.

Cultivating a starter from scratch is fairly simple and straightforward, and the basic principle involves combining flour and water.

Because there are naturally occurring yeast and bacteria already present in flour and in the air, adding water to the flour + bacteria allows the bacteria to begin feeding on the starches in the flour.

This is called fermentation, and by feeding fresh flour + water to this combination, we can create a strong culture of wild yeast that can then be used in place of traditional dry yeast to leaven our bread.

If you are looking for a good tutorial on how to make a sourdough starter, my friend Kristin has a wonderful one.

She also has an awesome video that covers all the ins and outs of what’s happening in a starter and why we do certain things throughout the process of cultivating and maintaining a starter, which I’ve included below.

My sourdough starter, Carly, was born on January 6, 2020! And you can follow along in my Insta highlight to watch her go from nothing to everything.

So Carly is who I’m working with in these photos. Say hiiiiiiii!

Though I did make many sourdough loaves with my starter, I really wanted to do something different, and I also wanted to present other recipes for those of you out there looking to use your sourdough starters in something else, too.

Because as much as we loveeeee sourdough loaves in this house, we don’t need one every week.

Enter: my sourdough English muffin recipe.

As far as bread making goes, this recipe is pretty straightforward. While we aren’t using any traditional yeast, we’ll still be using a portion of our starter as the leavening component, and nothing in the rest of the recipe is out of the ordinary.

For these sourdough English muffins, you’ll need 80 grams of a fed starter, which is a little more than 1/3 of a cup.

Remember, you don’t want to use up all of your starter, so make sure you feed your starter enough food so that you are left with enough for a feed the next day.

HOW MUCH TIME DO I NEED FOR THESE ENGLISH MUFFINS?

You’ll want to feed your starter about 8 to 10 hours before you want to start your dough. We’re looking to use a portion of the starter when it’s nice and bubbly and active.

Once the dough is together, you’ll need to let it rise for about 4 hours.

There is no punching down of the dough, but rather simply turning the dough out onto a floured surface before gently rolling and cutting into circles.

You’ll get 8-10 muffins, and it’s ok to gently re-roll the dough once. Any more than that and you’ll find yourself with incredibly elastic dough that will shrivel upon re-shaping.

Once you have your muffins cut, they’ll rest for another 1 hour where they will puff up a bit more.

Then, it’s onto the baking, which you’ll do in a pan on the stove (no oven!).

Crack ’em open with a fork, just like you would a classic English muffin, and you’re on your way to a delightful little piece of heaven straight from the sourdough gods.

Aren’t they so cute, too?

We were in love with these sourdough English muffins. The slight tang was perfect for slathering with butter, jam, or almond butter, and we had a few sandwiches on them, too.

It was so fun to use my starter for something other than a traditional sourdough loaf, and I think this recipe has put a lightbulb in my head to experiment with more recipes that use starter in place of traditional yeast.

So tell me– will you be making your own sourdough English muffins? Sticking to your basic sourdough loaves? Have you been inspired to start a starter if you don’t already have one?

Don’t forget to tag me on Insta (@freshaprilflours / #freshaprilflours) so I can see your starters in use!