Sourdough Discard English Muffins
Fluffy little Sourdough Discard English Muffins are really simple to make and full of the goodness of milk and honey. The starter discard gives them a hint of tanginess needed for perfect muffins. Serve for breakfast (your own Egg McMuffin!) or toasted with butter and jam.
Servings: 9 muffins
Calories:
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Alter quantities (metric only) 9 muffins
Here's what you'll need...
- crumpet rings optional, but these do help to keep your muffins uniform and prevent spreading
- Small saucepan
- Dutch dough whisk or wooden spoon
- Frying pan with lid preferrable heavy duty one
- Dough scraper (optional)
Ingredients you'll need...
- 125 g Sourdough discard preferably use recent discard (9 tablespoons)
- 30 g Runny honey (1½ tablespoons)
- ¾ teaspoon Fast action yeast
- 30 g Unsalted butter (2 tablespoons)
- 235 g Full fat milk (1 Cup)
- 320 g Bread flour (2 ⅔ Cup)
- 1½ teaspoon Fine salt
- 60 g Fine semolina (⅓ Cup)
Here's what we do...
- Add your sourdough discard, honey and yeast to your mixing bowl, but do not stir them together.
- Slowly melt your butter in your small saucepan over a gentle heat and then stir in your milk.
- Bring your milk and butter mixture to a lukewarm temperature of about 38℃.
- Tip your warmed milk and butter into the ingredients into your mixing bowl and use a balloon whisk to whisk together for 2 minutes.
- Leave the mixture to stand for 5 minutes, by which time the dried yeast should have all dissolved.
- Mix your flour and salt together and add them all in one go. No need to sift it first.
- Mix for 2 minutes using your Dutch dough whisk (or a wooden spoon) to form a shaggy dough.
- Remove the dough from the bowl, then lightly oil the bowl with some olive oil (or other oil, any is fine) to stop the dough from sticking to the bowl whilst it proves.
- Return the muffin dough to the oiled bowl, cover the bowl with cling film (plastic wrap) and set aside to prove for 1-2 hours.
- For best results, once your dough has doubled in size, place the covered bowl in the fridge and leave it overnight. You can, however, cook your muffins right away if you prefer.
- When you are ready to cook your English Muffins, lightly flour your work surface, and tip the dough onto it. A dough scraper is useful to useful to help get the dough out of the bowl.
- Use your hands (or a rolling pin if you prefer) to spread the dough out into a circle one inch deep.
- Use your 3 inch cutter to cut out 8 or 9 equal sized muffins. You will need to re-roll the dough and do this in two batches.
- Spread your fine semolina over your baking sheet and oil your muffin rings (I use a spray oil). Then place your muffin rings on the baking sheet and insert a cut out muffin into each one. Wiggle them around a bit to fully coat the base of the muffin with semolina. Sprinkle semolina over the top.
- Cover the English muffins with a clean tea towel and allow them to rise for about 1-2 hours (again, mine can take up to 2 hours if my kitchen is 21℃).
- Heat your frying pan over a medium heat for a minute. Then gently edge your palette knife, or a large flat spatula or fish slice, under a muffin and its ring and lift it and place it in the frying pan. Repeat until you have as many muffins as you can fit in the pan.
- Place the lid on the pan and cook for a couple of minutes, then check the base of the muffin. At this point, they should only just be starting to brown; if they are a deeper brown, then turn the heat down to allow the inside of the muffin to cook.
- Once the base is a golden deep brown, turn the muffins over, replace the lid and continue cooking the other side until that side is also a deep brown in colour.
- Remove the muffins and their muffin tins to a cooling rack. Leave them to cool for 10 minutes before running a knife around the edge of the tin and removing it. The sides of the muffins should be shiny with no signs of doughiness. If they still look doughy, return the muffins to the pan, turn the heat down low, cover and continue to cook for another 5 minutes.
- Enjoy! See blog post for serving suggestions.
Use recent discard if you want your English Muffins to have characteristic sourdough holes and flavour. Older discard is fine to use, but will give your English muffins a more bread like texure.
Careful not to overheat your milk, as it will destroy the dried yeast and the natural yeast in the sourdough discard.
The time the dough takes to double will differ based how warm your milk mixture was and how warm your kitchen is. My kitchen is aroudn 21 ℃ and I tend to find my dough takes 2 hours to rise.
Leaving your Sourdough muffin dough in the fridge for 12 hours will help develop the gluten in the flour, thus making your muffins more sturdy during cooking. It will also allow the flavour to develop.
You do not have to use crumpet/muffin rings; this is just my preference as it keeps them all uniform.
Everyone's cooker is different, so keep checking your muffins and if you find that they brown before the 5 minutes are up, it means that they are cooking too quickly and may be raw inside. Therefore, turn the heat down a little. Also, by the time you come to cook the next batch of muffins the pan will be really hot, so turn the heat down to medium-low for this next batch.
Supporting Notes
No sourdough starter? No problem.
Simply use the ingredients below and follow the same process as per the recipe card above:
400 grams strong white bread flour
30 grams honey (or sugar)
1 and ¾ teaspoons of dried fast-acting yeast
250 ml full-fat milk
Fine semolina for dusting