Sourdough English Muffins

Okay, so you’ve made your low-discard sourdough starter, and now you’re looking for something easy to do with it. Well, YAY, because you’ve found the perfect place with these beautiful, wonderful Sourdough English Muffins. These wonderful little breakfast (or anytime) breads are naturally leavened and oh-so easy to make. You don’t need to babysit them, you don’t have to plan your whole day around them. You just mix them at night, let them proof in the fridge overnight, and then toast them up the next morning! All of the gluten development happens overnight, and the shaping process is a breeze, so if you’re a beginner baker (or even just a lazy-but-experienced one), these English Muffins are a great recipe to have in your back pocket.

Oh, I should also mention they are delicious and taste homemade AF. There’s nothing like that sourdough flavor, classic yeast just isn’t the same!

What does “activated starter” mean?

A good sourdough recipe starts with a good sourdough starter. To put it simply, sourdough starter is what gives your baked good a way to rise. It’s a mix of flour and water that we let sit out at room temperature to ferment so that the wild yeast within the flour creates natural gas bubbles, which when mixed with fresh flour in a dough, creates a natural rise. When I say “active sourdough starter,” this means a sourdough starter that is at its peak level of “bubbling,” AKA it’s greatest height!

Sourdough starter is complicated, so I recommend mastering that first. You can find my guide to sourdough starter here.

HOW TO ACTIVATE YOUR STARTER

Once you have a mature and healthy starter, you want to activate it about 4-5 hours before you begin baking this recipe. I like to activate my starter with the following ratios:

• 60 grams of mature starter
• 40 grams of all-purpose flour
• 20 grams of whole wheat flour
• 60 grams of cool water

This will give you 180 grams of total activated starter, which means 100 grams to use in the recipe, and 80 grams of starter to keep for later. You want to have some leftover starter so that you can keep using it. If we use it all at once, then we’d have to make a whole starter again, and that can take up to 7 days (which um…no thank you).

Ingredients you will need for homemade english muffins

After you get through the process of making sure you have enough sourdough starter, everything else is fairly simple. This is what you will need for the recipe:

• 100 grams activated sourdough starter, see above
• 238 grams milk of choice, at 85-90°F
• 20 grams maple syrup, or agave nectar, or honey
• 210 grams bread flour
• 150 grams all-purpose flour, or whole wheat flour or rye flour, if you’d like to substitute another flavor
• 1 teaspoon Diamond Crystal kosher salt
• White cornmeal, for dusting

How to shape and bake these sourdough english muffins

These muffins are easy to make because they don’t need much handling (or kneading) at all! The gluten in this dough forms due to the long fermentation period over time. Since the dough is hydrated and sitting in the fridge overnight, there’s not much work required on our end!

So for this recipe, get out a large bowl, mix together the starter, milk and maple syrup until foamy. I tend to do this with my hands, you want the starter completely dissolved into the milk.

Then add the flours and mix with your hands to combine. Do a few scoops and folds of the dough in the bowl until the dough is smooth, then cover and let rise for 8-12 hours or until doubled in size and bubbling at the top. You want the dough handled enough to be smooth, but you don’t need to knead it like crazy.

Move the dough to a lightly floured surface, gently pull it into a rectangle and press down until it is 1-inch tall. Use a round cutter to slice into 8 even circles, each about 4 inches in diameter. Press together and re-roll out any remaining dough as needed to get 8 circles.

Tip: If you want thicker (and bigger) sourdough english muffins, you can take two slices and stack them on top of each other, I’ve found they make a pretty delicious mega-muffin.

Then you just lightly dust a half sheet pan with white cornmeal, transfer the muffins to the sheet pan and flip them so that each side is coated well with cornmeal.

Set a cast iron or nonstick pan over LOW heat. In batches, cook the muffins for 5-7 minutes on each side, or until golden brown. Serve warm!

FAQ

Looking for other sourdough recipes and tips and tricks?

Here’s a few of my favorite starter recipes from my sourdough roster!

Why is this recipe in grams?

Baking is a very finicky and exact science. The only way to ensure complete accuracy is through measuring by weight, and not volume. As much as I wish I could give you multiple ways to measure ingredients, in this recipe measuring by cups might cause some volatility and miss-matched results. I want to ensure you get the best results with this recipe (and I want to keep this recipe fool-proof!) so I highly recommend getting a small affordable kitchen scale if you want to move forward with this particular recipe!

Plus, it saves dishes – get a small scale and live life in the fast lane 🙂

And that’s it for these naturally leavened, oh-so-good-for-you Sourdough English Muffins!

If you make it, please tag me on Pinterest or Instagram so I can see! It’s my favorite thing to scroll through stories and see what you all are making.

And of course, feel free to leave any questions, comments, or reviews! This is the best place to reach me, and I’d love to hear from you <3

Watch the recipe here

The video may not fully represent the recipe. For best results, follow the instructions as written.