Wednesday, February 17, 2010

English Muffins

Having a sourdough starter is great because it forces you to attend to it and use it on a regular basis. I now regularly make sourdough blueberry muffins, which come together really quickly. The funny thing about sourdough is, in most of the recipes I use there is absolutely no sour taste. The bread is usually sweet, in fact. I have read that getting a sourdough to actually taste sour requires some practice. E had wistfully mentioned English muffins a few times recently.. because I use SPUD, buy in bulk in a food co-op and use other diverse sources for groceries, I make it to a mainstream grocery store about once a month. A few things are massively cheaper, and there is no where else to get decent cottage cheese. Even though I'm pretty sure it has gelatin in it, and I know it has guar gum in it.. what can you do. I tried live culture cottage cheese once; never again.. It was too funky for me.
Anyhoo. English muffins are another thing only found at the MSGS.. but after seeing Nicole's post I was inspired. How hard could it be? This answer is: not at all, if you've made buns or bread before. And they are very good with butter and Bunny Honey. Bunny Honey is produced in the Peace Country (terroir honey!) and the tetra pak container is genius. Very environmentally friendly (almost no packaging) and no sticky lid to contend with.
I used a recipe at The Fresh Loaf for the muffins.

3 comments:

pam said...

This was the issue I had with keeping a starter. I always felt like I was wasting that cup that I threw away each week. I didn't have any ideas for how to use it instead of pitching it.

Anonymous said...

Yes it definitely keeps you on your toes.. but you know, you don't have to throw away a cup a week. You can reduce how much and how often you feed it (I feed mine 1/2 a cup of flour and 1/2 a cup of water every ten days or so). The cultures are pretty hardy and will even go 3 weeks without being fed and still bounce back. That is risky business though, I will feel pretty bad if I ever kill this 50 year old culture by accident..

nicole said...

yours turned out way better than mine but i am going to try again...for sure...i found my recipe at king arthur flour.
as for sourdough starter apparently i was a bad mother...i will try again because i know i live in a prime sourdough part of the world.