Sourdough English Muffins

 

Almost every morning I wake up for work I make myself a egg and cheese muffin for breakfast.  I used to buy a lot of Thomas' brand from the grocery store especially since the bakery is right in town where I live.  I found some great satisfaction in making these muffins myself at home and it is surprisingly easy. Since I have been sourdough obsessed, I already had the starter ready and fed.  I make a batch typically on the weekend and freeze what I will not use during the week.  The added benefit from making them myself is simple ingredients (really just flour, water, milk, salt, and sugar or honey) and no preservatives, additives, or soy.

To learn about making the starter check out my Sourdough Starter Post.

This is my recipe for making English muffins. 

Ingredients;

1 cup fed sourdough starter

4 cups all purpose flour

1/4 cup powdered milk (or regular milk just reducing water)

About 3/4 - 1 cup water

tablespoon or honey or sugar

1 teaspoon salt

some yellow cornmeal for sprinkling

In a large mixing bowl add 1 cup of sourdough starter.  Then I like to use 1/4 cup of dry powdered milk, but you could also use 1 cup of regular milk and reduce the added water. 

Next, add about a tablespoon of honey (or granulated sugar), 4 cups of all purpose flour, and about 3/4 cup of warm water.  

 

Mix with a sturdy wooden spoon until the mixture start to become tacky, then wet your hands well and turn it onto a floured surface and knead the dough until it is smooth and just slightly tacky adding more water if necessary.

Now there is just some time to wait.  Place the dough ball into a bowl and cover with a damp tea towel or I like to use my corningware dish that has a plastic lid to seal. 

 After 8 -10 hours (or shorter if it is warm in the kitchen) turn the dough out onto a floured surface andpress it out using your hands or a floured rolling pin until it is about 1" in thickness   Using a 3" biscuit cutter, cut rounds and place them on a parchment lined baking sheet that's been sprinkled with cornmeal.  

 

 Sprinkle the tops with cornmeal, cover with a tea towel and allow to rise for 1 hour at room temperature. 

  Preheat your lidded iron skillet over LOW heat and let it fully heat up the lid and pan. No oil is needed, sprinkle corn meal over the pan and place muffins into the skillet spaced 2" apart, cover and cook the first side for about 4 minutes.  

 Sprinkle additional corn meal over the tops and turn the muffins over and cook for an additional 4 minutes with the lid on. It helps to press down with a spatula lightly to eliminate the dome and get an even brown. 

  When done, the center of a muffin should register about 200°F on an instant-read thermometer.  Cool on a wire rack and your done. You can then freeze them in freezer bags or keep at room temps for a week.

Split them with a fork for maximum "nooks and crannies" before toasting.

Little Delta Bowhunters Sourdough Starter

Bowhunting and sourdough go hand in hand.  I'd like to share a little history I learned from an old post on a popular traditional archery forum on the internet.  

Likely you already know the name Fred Bear, and perhaps you know of his famous trips to hunt in the late 1950's at the Little Delta in Alaska immortalized in Glenn St. Charles novel "Bows on the Little Delta".  Fred made most of his hunts based from a old log trappers cabin owned by Dick McIntire there, and in 1964 Dick Mauch returned there with another group of hunters.  

Supposedly, McIntire had acquired the cabin and the sourdough starter from the old trapper who was running the trap lines on the Little Delta. No one knows how long the trapper had it, or what ingredients he used to start it.   He ran the trap line for many years and guarded his starter keeping it in the top of the flour sack in a ball of dough. Whenever he wanted to bake he would just dump water into the top of the flour sack and mix it in with the sourdough ball...always leaving a portion of the sourdough behind for later use. Once the old timers would get a good starter going, they would guard it carefully to keep it alive and use it indefinitely.  Dick brought this starter back and used it throughout the rest of their lives to make pancakes, waffles, and breads in their home and cabin.  Dick's sourdough bread became sort of famous to his many hosted guests and acquaintances.  

  Here is Fred Bear outside the trappers cabin:

Here Bob Kelly is in the Little Delta kitchen in 1959:

I wonder now if any of that starter survived anywhere amongst the bowhunting community? Though the yeast species change depending on the local environment and populations over time so it may not matter except to those who reminisce about bygone times.  

Starter had much utility to the pioneers and hunters because it was the way they could make bread rise without store bought yeast.  This, along with the bowhunting story above, made it interesting to me and I started a small obsession with all things sourdough.  

Making sourdough starter is easy enough.  All you need is flour, water and time.   When I first started trying to play with sourdough starter I made it from the water of boiled potatoes, but later found this was not needed to make some super active starter. 

Add about 1 cup of four to 1/2 cup of water. Then just cover lightly and let it sit.

This is a great site that describes in detail how to start, feed and maintain your starter.  

When baking frequently I keep my starter at room temperature and feed it a few spoons of flour daily.  When I am away or busy I just place it in the refrigerator and feed it weekly or so.  If I am really going to take a break, I can spread some thinly on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper and dry it out into chips and keep that in a mason jar.  It is then easy to reconstitute in a day or two if needed by simply adding more flour and water.

 

 

The starter can then be used to make everything from pancakes, breads, rolls, English muffins, waffles, pretzels, etc.  

I plan to post some of these above recipes in the future here.