I make sourdough so that means I need to keep a sourdough starter. You need to feed it regularly, like a pet, even if you don't want to make a loaf of bread. To use up the extra sourdough starter, often called 'discard', I bake other things.
A few days ago I made English muffins and added sourdough starter discard into the dough. The results were great! The taste was not sour because I didn't rest the dough overnight, but the muffins had a wonderful, complex flavor.
This is the recipe I created:
350 grams of all purpose flour
115 grams of hot water
115 grams of cold soy milk
100g starter, not fed, but still active (starter was reasonably thick)
5 grams of sugar (used kibi-sato light brown sugar)
5 grams of salt (used yuki-shio powdered salt)
cornmeal to coat the muffins
rice bran oil for cooking
Put quite hot water into a glass pitcher and add the sugar, add cold soy milk to drop the temperature. Test and wait until it is blood heat. (about 35 degrees)
Put the starter into a bowl and add the liquid, mix completely. Add in the flour all at once, put the salt on top of that, mix.
When everything is just smoothly incorporated into a dough, cover and leave it for a few hours in a warm place. It is ready when it looks puffy.
Put a little cornmeal on the counter and turn out the dough and press it lightly into about 2cm thick. Use a big cookie cutter (8cm) to cut out circles. Put them sticky side down on a tray dusted with cornmeal. Any extra dough can be balled up like you were making buns, then pressed into disks. (These actually turned out nicer than the cut ones.) Leave the disks on the tray for about 30 minutes to rest and rise a little again.
Heat a non-stick skillet on a cooktop. Brush (or spray) on just a very little oil*, enough so the muffins surely won’t stick. Add muffins to the pan, about 4 at a time so they don’t touch. ‘Swirl’ the pan once to make sure they move. Cook on the first side for about 6 minutes. Perhaps with the lid on the pan would be good. Flip over the muffins and cook on the second side for about 4 or 5 minutes. Tap on each side and check that they sound hollow. If you are worried, turn off the heat, flip them again and let them rest in the residual heat for another couple of minutes.
Take out and put on a wire rack.
When cooled, split with a fork by stabbing a fork around and around the side of the muffin, and pull apart.
* I used the bare minimum of oil (rice bran oil) and it gave them a nice smell and color. In America they seem to be cooked in a LOT of butter, but I’ve also seen no oil at all. I’d be worried they would stick.
If you'd like to see more bread I've made, please watch this video on YouTube.
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