English Muffins

This recipe calls for sourdough starter and requires proofing for eight hours or overnight. Like my other recipes you'll have to have captured your own yeast (you can follow the instructions here)

This recipe produces about 8 quickly vanishing muffins (depending on how big you make them). I would recommend doing 8 at a time until you get the hang of the dough and then doubling or tripling the recipe. They freeze well so once you know you won't mess them up you might as well make a sextuple batch and pack your freezer.

Total Preparation Time

Total preparation time is 10+ hours but most of this is just waiting for the yeast to work on your dough. Actual mixing and cooking time is < 1 hour.

5min Preparing the sponge
8+ hours waiting for the sponge to sour
10min doing the final mixing and shaping
35min waiting for the dough to rise
30min cooking (or whatever)

Ingredients

Sponge:

Milk - 276g
Starter - 110g
White flour - 184g
Wheat flour - 100g

Final mixin before rise:

White flour - 75g
Salt - 3/4tsp
Baking soda - 1tsp
Honey 1.5tsp or (2.5tsp sugar)
Semolina flour (corn meal works)

Double batch:

Milk - 552g
Starter - 220g
White flour - 368g
Wheat flour - 200g
White flour - 150g
Salt - 1.5 tsp
Baking soda - 2 tsp
Honey - 1 tbsp (or 1.5 tbsp sugar)

Sextuple batch:

Milk - 1656g
Starter - 660g
White flour - 1104g
Wheat flour -600g
White flour - 450g
Salt - 4.5 tsp
Baking soda - 6 tbsp
Honey - 3 tbsp (or 4.5 tbsp sugar)

Method

Mix the sponge ingredients and put it in a warm spot somewhere to sit overnight. Use a mixer if you've got it.
When you're ready to bake, mix in the final ingredients.
Put some parchment paper on a cookie sheet and grease it with butter.
Sprinkle the greased paper with a light sprinkling of semolina flour.
Lightly sprinkle your work surface with flour and coat your hands with cocaine or flour, whichever you prefer.
Take the sticky dough out in one lump and give it a quick roll in the flour.
Roll or press it flat and start cutting out round shapes with your cup or glass.
Put the muffins on the parchment paper - leaving room for them to spread out.
Re-knead the scraps of leftover dough to make the last muffins.
Let this rise for 30 minutes.
Heat your skillet and lube it with some butter.
Cook them until they look like muffins.

Tips

When the dough is wet it's difficult to work with and I ruined many batches when the muffins stuck to the cookie sheet, each other, the parchment paper, the plastic bag I was putting the sheet in as a test, the scissors I used to cut the parchment paper, the counters, the wall, the sink, my bicycle, my fingers and my hair. Once the dough sticks to something it is impossible to remove cleanly and tends to deflate and stretch into thin spikes like a dead spider.

Through trial an error I discovered the best way to deal with this was to let them rise uncovered in a warm oven and then take them out and leave them on the counter while you get your pans hot. This should give them time to develop a thin dry crust and they should be much easier to pick up and put into the pan.

You'll have to experiment on how hot to get the pan - it's a very fine line between taking forever and burning.
Don't let the muffins rise for too long. The dough is fragile and will deflate if you leave it.