Sourdough English Muffins

By Hannah Dela Cruz, blogger and cookbook author

English muffins are flat yeasted buns that are slowly fried instead of baked. The result is a delightfully crispy crust and a soft-but-crunchy crumb with lots of nooks and crannies. Although most English muffin recipes already call for an overnight rest, we go a step further by making ours using a sourdough starter. Sourdough imparts a deeper flavor, and the long, slow fermentation makes the resulting bread much easier to digest. So not only are these English muffins more flavorful, they are better for you too!

How to Make Sourdough English Muffins

For tender, moist, and fluffy sourdough English muffins, we incorporated a lot of milk and water in our recipe. Although this results in a wet and sticky dough, you can still make this recipe completely by hand. We recommend letting the dough rest for an hour immediately after lightly mixing the ingredients, then using the “slap and fold” method to create strength in the dough.

Letting the dough rest for an hour after mixing the ingredients allows the flour to fully hydrate and the gluten to form strong bonds without over-oxidizing from excessive mixing. The dough will be stretchy and extensible after this long rest period, and feel almost impossible to knead. Using the slap and fold method (also known as the French fold) will allow you to work with this extremely wet dough until it is smooth, supple, and cohesive. 

Practice Patience

Patience is the number one ingredient when frying sourdough English muffins. Cook them slowly over low heat, otherwise the outside of the English muffin may scorch before the inside is fully cooked, resulting in a gummy interior and a burnt, bitter crust.

Don’t forget to toast before serving! Despite their long cooking time, English muffins are not fully baked when they come off the griddle and need to be finished in a toaster. They are traditionally split using a fork—not a knife—to expose their wonderfully uneven interior then finished by toasting and serving with butter and jam or in eggs Benedict. 

Sourdough English Muffins Recipe

Scroll to Printable Recipe

This recipe calls for a lot of milk and butter, which makes these sourdough English muffins more tender, but can drastically slow down fermentation. To ensure that your sourdough starter can stand up to the challenge, feed it two to three times the day before using it in this bake and store it inside your Brod & Taylor Folding Proofer at 79 °F / 26 °C. This ensures fermentation occurs at an optimal level so you can stick to the time cues, which goes a long way in guaranteeing the success of this recipe.

Yield

8 to 10 sourdough English muffins

Timing

Start this bread about 18 hours before serving. The 8 hour cold proof is convenient to do overnight. You can start the recipe in the early evening, cold proof overnight, then finish early the next morning for a brunch with fresh English muffins.

Ingredients

Dough:

*We always recommend weighing flour for bread recipes. If you must measure by volume, dip the cup into a container of flour, then gently level off with a straight-edge such as the back of a butter knife without packing the flour.

Topping:

Equipment:

Getting ready:

Set the proofer to 79 °F / 26 °C and place the water tray in the middle of the warming plate on the base. Pour ¼ C / 60 ml water into the tray and place the rack on top of the tray.

Instructions

Scald the milk: Heat the milk in a small saucepan over medium low heat until bubbles form on the edges of the milk and a skin begins to form on the surface. The temperature should register between 180–185 °F / 82–85 °C. Remove from the heat and transfer to a bowl. Do not let the milk come to a boil.

Let the milk cool completely before adding it to the rest of the ingredients or it may kill the yeast in the starter. 

Mix the dough: Whisk together the whole wheat flour, all-purpose flour, and salt until no lumps remain. Combine the softened butter into the flour mixture using your fingertips until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Set aside.

In a large mixing bowl stir together the cooled milk, active sourdough starter, water, and honey until no traces of starter remain.

Add the flour mixture into the milk mixture a third at a time, making sure each addition is fully incorporated before adding the next. This will prevent lumps from forming and will ensure all of the flour becomes hydrated.

The dough will feel extremely wet and sticky at this point. Place the bowl inside the Folding Proofer. Let rest for 1 hour. 

Finish in the toaster oven: Use a fork to split the sourdough English muffins. Toast for 3 to 5 minutes. Serve with butter and jam or your favorite topping!

Store: Store any leftovers in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 4 days. 

Overall Bread Formula:

Note: We follow the convention of using the sourdough starter as a single ingredient in the baker's percentage calculations. This is the simplest method and provides for easy scaling of this recipe. Separately, we also compute the overall hydration using the total flour and total milk and water including the starter ingredients.