Sourdough English Muffins!

19 years ago

Yesterday I decided to try making some No-knead English muffins. I read some Muffin recipes and then adapted the No-Knead Bread recipe.

Basically used the same recipe, except I added about a T. of honey and used Semolina flour to flour the board and sprinkle. Divided the dough into 12 balls, next time I will make 10 balls to make them a bit bigger, and then left them for about 2 hours for the second rise. When I returned there were 12 English Muffins ready to put on my griddle.

OMG...they are delicious and I've already eaten 3 of them!!

Here they are on the griddle after the 1st flip.

Here's the finished product.

I will never buy English Muffins again. Think we may have Eggs Benedict for dinner!

Michelle

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Comments (21)

lucyny
19 years ago
Michelle, those english muffins look absolutely scrumptious w/all the nooks & crannies catching that butter....YUM
femmelady
19 years ago
Wow! Very impressive. I've thought of making them and have never tried. Now I will.
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There's pannetone and then there's pannetone LOL. We went to Boston at the end of November and stayed in the North End (swoon...Little Italy). One of the outings we took was a culinary walking tour (Michelle Topor) which included stopping at a salumeria, bakery, coffee purveyor, liquor store and produce market. At one of the stops we were introduced to an imported pannetone that cost a small fortune, but mama mia! Heaven! Although I admit my pannetone is excellent, it wasn't as good as this one. I think the difference is in the raisins. I use golden raisins because that's what is readily available. "Authentic" pannetone uses sultanas, which are raisins that are the product of the Sultana grape, which grows in Turkey. The package was small and cost around $23.00. (She who is on the hunt for sultanas...I will make a pannetone to rival the one in Boston)
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I make crumpets with rings, but cut English Muffins with a cookie or biscuit cutter to the size I want them. Both are baked on a griddle. Crumpets (cooked in rings) are more like a tough pancake and you need to toast them in a toaster or toaster oven to serve, after they were baked on the griddle. You don't split crumpets. I cut English Muffins into squares using a pizza cutter to avoid second-cuts. Second-cuts are cut from the dough left after you cut the dough the first time. You gather it up and re-work it to cut another batch or rounds. This is the #1 cause of tough English Muffins (or biscuits). The trick to English Muffins is to have a well-hydrated dough so you get the open/holey texture. Before I adapted my favorite English Muffin recipe to the bread machine, I would knead the dough with wet hands (just have a bowl of water handy to dip your hands in). Any substantial bread dough can be made into English Muffins. It doesn't require a special recipe, just special hydration, cutting and baking on a griddle. Another tip is to bake them on a griddle where you can cover them for the baking of the first side (bake about 8-minutes), then flip, and bake UNcovered for the other side. I have a large electric griddle that can accommodate a large number of muffins, and the lid to my roaster fits over it for baking the first side of English Muffins. Don't cut English Muffins with a knife, use a "fork" (aka English Muffin Splitter) to split them apart. Otherwise you will destroy the open crumb. A problem people often make is not having enough griddle space to keep up with the number of muffins in the recipe, and will find the last of the batch has over-proofed from the long wait to be baked, and they get poor-quality muffins. If your recipe is large, make half a recipe or retard half the dough, or retard a portion of the cut English Muffins in the refrigerator while working with the first portion. I made homemade yogurt yesterday just so I could make English Muffins today. LOVE the smell of them baking!!! -Grainlady
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Here is the sourdough English Muffin recipe that I have made several times. You can use all bread flour or half bread/half whole wheat as I do. These are cooked on a griddle or in a large fry pan for about 6-7 minutes each side. The recipe makes 10-12 and comes from Dean Tucker's book, Sourdough Cookin', 1976. Sourdough English Muffins 1 cup sourdough starter 2 1/2 cups flour 3/4 cup buttermilk 1/4 cup yellow cornmeal, plus 2 TB 1 t. soda 1/2 t. salt Take the buttermilk and the starter from the refrigerator at least 30 minutes before preparing the recipe. When all ingredients are at room temperature, combine all and stir well. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth - or knead 5 minutes on low in an electric mixer, adding more flour if necessary to prevent sticking. Roll dough to a half inch thickness and allow to rest for 10 minutes. Cut with a floured 3" cutter. Sprinkle 2 TB of cornmeal on a sheet of waxed paper. Place muffins on cornmeal and press lightly to coat each side. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise for 1 hour. Bake on a lightly greased griddle heated to 350 for about 10 minutes each side, [mine did not take that long to cook] turning occasionally while cooking. Cool on a rack or serve right away. These freeze very well! I put 2-4 in a freezer zip bag when they are completely cooled and freeze.
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Not idiotic. No question is if you don't know the answer, but you weren't supposed to know the answer to this one. When you make a recipe like that you feed it up first. Details below. First off, the measurements aren't important for keeping your yeast alive. They become important for using it because you want to know how much flour and water you're putting in. If you don't need a recipe, you don't even need to know that, and can just do it by feel. I.e., until it's wet or dry enough. You can work your way back to knowing your proportions just by feeding for a few more days. If you've been feeding half water and half flour by weight each time, which on second reading, I think is what you were saying, the only issue is how hungry the yeast is, and no biggie. It's still all "100% hydration", i.e., the same weight of water as of flour, so no matter how much you have total, you know how much of each. Re the whole wheat, as I said previously, you don't want to shock the starter. Especially since it's not rising strongly yet. I'd feed for another week with AP just to make it easier, but if you feel like playing it's not wrong. Start by giving it only a bit of whole wheat and the rest white, and work up to all whole wheat, or it may go into a coma. Give it some time even if it's dormant and it might recover, but this early it could give up. Probably won't, but could. If you start with 10g, and work up to the full 50g over a week, it's less likely to protest. Whole wheat doesn't form as strong a gluten because of the bran, and the bran can actually cut the gluten threads as it works and rises. Eventually, it will double, but it make take it awhile to develop "legs". If you can, use whole wheat bread flour, or hard wheat berries rated at 14+% protein (this is a different number from the one in the nutrition info on the bag, which due to rounding isn't precise enough to be meaningful for baking comparisons). I don't think red or white hard wheat matters much. White might be a little easier to work with, but not enough to fret over. Feeding up your starter means increasing the size. So you have 200g in your jar, and your recipe calls for 400g. Put your starter in a bigger jar and give it its own weight in food, but don't discard, so use 100g of water and 100g of flour. Wait your standard 8-12 hours for it to double, pull off your 100g feed and set aside/store, discard 100g and feed the remaining 200g by 100g flour and 100g water. If your starter is old and strong, you can probably just feed without discarding, but while it's young, you need more food. So, when you have a recipe that calls for "1 cup of starter", it's usually talking about a wetter starter, that's more of a thin batter or slurry consistency. For your sanity, if the recipe doesn't say the hydration ratio, or give a starter recipe where you can see the proportions, skip it until you're comfortable baking with your starter. If it is a 300% hydration recipe, for instance--the weight of the flour is always 100% and the proportional weight of the water is measured off that, so 300% means three times as much water by weight as the weight of the flour--so once you've separated out your keeper starter, you can increase the water in your feeding, or you can feed first and add the water right before you use it. If you're baking daily, you can just keep a very wet starter going on the counter. If not, it's harder to maintain healthily. Other recipes often call for just your kind of starter, half water half flour. For one of them, just feed up the starter to the correct volume. There are different ideas about the best time to use the starter. No matter what, the whole point is that the yeast will feed on the carbs and burp making the bread rise. Unless directed otherwise, I use it after it has doubled, but well before the next feeding time. Have fun!
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wizardnm
19 years ago
Michelle...go directly to that beautiful pantry of yours, pick out a jar of peach butter and enjoy it on one of your wonderful SD Eng muffins.... YUM!!!

Those look really good!

Nancy
User
19 years ago
Wow, I'm impressed too. Those look perfect. Got to make some of those one day soon.

Ann
kathleen_li
19 years ago
Michelle, they look great! Yes, spread with something delicious and enjoy!
User
19 years ago
Michelle they do look great and they need marmalade :)
earthlydelights
19 years ago
is my room ready yet? LOL

is that a cast iron tea kettle? is it vintage?

maryanne
Marigene
19 years ago
Michelle, you are a little baking machine lately! Great looking English muffins, sure will taste good with some of the jams you made earlier in the season.
teresa_nc7
19 years ago
Wonderful muffins! I plan to try SD English muffins very soon. I've made regular yeasted muffins several times, but not SD yet.
Teresa
msafirstein
Original Author
19 years ago
I forgot to mention that I also added about 3/4 c. sourdough starter to the no-knead dough. Next time I think I will try baking them in the oven and see if there is a difference.

They are very good and there's only 3 left!

Maryanne, You miss nothing! It's a vintage cast aluminum tea kettle.

Michelle
lucyny
19 years ago
Michelle,
Those muffins look so great. Never having made them myself & my SDS is waiting in the wings for something grand to do with it, could you share the recipe?

Lucy
mustangs81
19 years ago
You have inspired me as I love EMs. Alton Brown has an interesting method of cooking EMs.

Place metal rings onto the griddle and coat lightly with vegetable spray. Using #20 ice cream scoop, place 2 scoops into each ring and cover with a pot lid or cookie sheet and cook for 5 to 6 minutes. Remove the lid and flip rings using tongs. Cover with the lid and cook for another 5 to 6 minutes or until golden brown. Place on a cooling rack, remove rings and cool. Split with fork and serve.
msafirstein
Original Author
19 years ago
I just use the recipe and directions I found on line for the No-knead bread and I will link it below.

For the English Muffins I added about 3/4 c. sd starter, about a T. of honey and increased the salt to 2 tsp. Then I followed the recipe directions for the no-knead bread for the first rise.

For the second rise, I divided the dough into 12 balls*** and laid them out on a splatt which had been sprinkled with semolina flour and flatted each ball to form the muffin. I sprinkled semolina on top of every muffin and then covered with a towel for the second rise.

I used my pancake flipper to move the muffins to the griddle and grilled until lightly brown on one side, then flipped each muffin and grill the other side.

****I will make 10 balls next time as I want my muffins a big bigger.

Here is a link that might be useful: No-knead Bread
msafirstein
Original Author
19 years ago
I am aware of the Muffin Rings but I would have to mail order the rings and I wanted to make my muffins ASAP. So opted to just free form the English Muffins and it worked out just fine.

Most recipes I found did not use the Muffin Rings. But I did consider using my wide-mouth jar rings too but I just don't think you need to bother with rings.

Michelle
artsyshell
19 years ago
Wow Michelle! Those look fabulous! Will definately be trying those soon. Thank you so much for the recipe.

Shelley
lackboys3
19 years ago
That was going to be my question - does one need the rings to make english muffins? So now I see I don't need the rings to make them, since freeform looks great! Also, what's a splatt? I have a pancake griddle that can scan two burners of my cooktop, is that the same thing?

The english muffins look so delicious, and I eat them quite often in the a.m., so that's a recipe I might try.
DONNA
msafirstein
Original Author
19 years ago
splatt

Boy did I slaughter that! It's supposed to be silpat.

You can use a pastry sheet, cutting board or counter. The no-knead dough is rather sticky so you do need to flour well. I used semolina flour instead of cornmeal or flour.

Michelle
fearlessem
19 years ago
Michelle --

One more question from yet another interested party... How long would you say you cooked them on the griddle for, and how high was the heat? Having never done these before, I'd think that they would burn on the outside before cooking on the inside?

Thanks for the inspiration!

Emily
msafirstein
Original Author
19 years ago
I sprayed with Pam and put my griddle on 350 degrees and let it thoroughly heat. Then placed each muffin on the griddle. You can use a frying pan too but I would suggest a heavy pan with a flat bottom that heats evenly.

Sorry I never time things because each oven is so different. When the Muffins were brown on the bottom I flipped them over. I think I cooked mine a bit too long. Next time I will flip when the bottom is just a barely golden brown.

If you google "English Muffin Recipe" you will find quite a few with different methods for baking. You may find a method that you are more comfortable with than what I did. Next time I'm going to try baking in the oven and see if it makes a difference. I would love to bake with a stone but I don't have one!

Donna, sorry forgot to answer one of your questions. You can use your giddle that fits over your burners. Just make sure that is it evenly heated before placing your Muffins on the griddle.

Michelle
lackboys3
19 years ago
Thanks Michelle! I had to laugh when I saw that "splatt" was really "silpat" - I've done that before:-) So I can use my double burner griddle, well heated, with some nonstick spray. Cool. This sounds like a nice weekend baking project with the boys.
DONNA
msafirstein
Original Author
19 years ago
Donna, if you're using the no-knead dough, which is very sticky, flour hands very well and keep them floured, otherwise you will have a big mess with the boys.

Michelle

Sourdough English Muffins!

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Sourdough English Muffins!

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