What? Not another recipe that uses flour?

Yes – I am starting with my various sourdough recipes as I get lots of questions about these. But tomorrow there will be something posted that doesn’t use flour (so, gluten-free) and is also vegan.

English muffins are not the same as American muffins (or, as we normally call them ‘muffins’); that is, they are not sweet mini-cakes covered in icing (that you bake in a muffin tray). No, these are delicious round mini-loaves of bread. One key advantage of English muffins over a normal loaf of bread is that they are cooked on the hob (no need to bake in the oven).

My instructions use sourdough – these are sourdough English muffins (and they are delicious). You can make them with yeast and they work fine but I don’t think they are as good in both flavour and texture. To make these muffins you will need one quantity of sourdough. If you haven’t already made sourdough bread, then you will need to read ‘Get your starter started‘ and ‘Sourdough bread‘. Follow the sourdough bread recipe until you get to the point (in the morning) of scooping the dough out onto a floured surface.

Once you have your dough (after the first rise), rather than shaping it into loaves, press down on it with your hand to flatten the ball… keep flattening until you have a flat shape that is about 1.5cm (or, if you like thick muffins, maybe 2cm) high. Now, using a round cutter (I use a 7.5cm cutter) cut out rounds and place them onto a floured baking tray.

Gather up all the off cuts, knead them into a ball, flatten them and recut.

Keep going until you have cut out all the dough (the last one may have to be shaped by hand and will look ‘rustic’).

My ‘rustic’ one is in the top right corner.

Dust the tops with flour; then turn them over and dust the bottoms (which are now facing up) and finally turn them back over. So, now both the tops and bottoms are well floured.

Leave them in a warm humid place for about an hour (my tip here is to put them in your turned-off oven with a tray of hot water at the bottom of the oven; the hot water will warm the oven and keep it humid)

After an hour, they should be well risen. Cooking takes place on the hob (in batches, I can fit five at a time in my pan). Use a very lightly greased, heavy based pan and set it over a medium heat. The muffins will take 7 minutes on each side to cook (that’s 14 minutes in total, remembering to turn them over half-way through).

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If you find they are not cooking or are cooking too fast, adjust the temperature of the pan – ideally you want 7 minutes each side (notice: the bottoms are very flat; but, as they cook, the tops will rise which will produce the distinctive centre-cooked look of a good English muffin) Once they are cooked, place on a cooling rack.

Once cooled, they can be sliced and toasted. Delicious with scrambled eggs or with a good quality marmalade.