Sourdough Walnut English Muffins

Sourdough Walnut English muffins, toasted on a cold winter’s morning or anytime. These walnut studded English Muffins are beyond the ordinary.

I love English muffins; they are always my first choice when I am out for breakfast. I always ask if English muffins are one of the options any time I eat out. There is something about the crunchy nooks and crannies and the soft fluffy interior that I love way beyond toast. If I am home and I want something to go with my eggs in the morning, my other favorite choice is a big slice of my walnut sourdough bread. The other day I thought, what if I combined the two together? The marriage of these two became what I have posted here.

Sourdough Walnut English Muffins are definitely not your ordinary English Muffins. These beauties are studded with walnuts and full of tangy sourdough flavor. They are quite probably the best English Muffins I have ever made. And I hope they will become a standard in your home too. This recipe is great to use up that discard from the sourdough that I always feel awful when I have to throw it down the drain. Though now that I have perfected making these, I use my starter just for baking these too!

These sourdough walnut English muffins are actually not hard to make. They do require an overnight sponge, but the actual effort is really not much. English Muffins are fried on a griddle or skillet with butter (or with oil if you are trying to be vegan.) Once you have made the sponge the next day, they come together fast and need to sit for an hour before cooking them. If you have a sourdough starter around and am looking for something else besides bread, this is definitely your ticket. I brought in some of this batch of these to Lion King, and they are still raving about them. I even have had someone who confessed that she didn’t like nuts tell me that she loved them in this recipe. I get requests for bringing in more all the time.

“English” muffins first appeared in North America around the 1850s where they appeared in cookbooks and newspapers. Samuel Bath Thomas from Plymouth England emigrated to New York City in 1874. He soon started selling what he called “toaster crumpets” from his own bakery near the corner of 20th Street and 9th Avenue in Manhattan. He sold English muffins to many of the restaurants and grocery stores in New York. From there, the English muffin and especially Thomas’ English Muffins became a mainstay of American households. Now even in the UK, they can be found in most grocery stores along with English muffins older cousin the crumpet. Crumpets are different from English muffins, made just using baking soda. The batter is thinner and is cooked only on one side, so there are holes on the top using a ring mold.

I have a plain version of sourdough English Muffins that I posted a couple of years ago. You can check that version here if you want to make some of them without nuts. It is a great basic recipe for sourdough English muffins. But now that I have added walnuts, I will probably not want to go back to those again. The walnuts really add this fantastic texture and flavor that make these something really special. The muffins are excellent toasted, but when I brought them into work, there wasn’t a toaster to be seen, and everyone loved them the way they were. These sourdough walnut English muffins freeze beautify too. I now have a bag of them ready in my freezer whenever I want some toasted in the morning with my coffee. If you need a round cutter set this one is fantastic from Amazon, and I used an iron skillet from Lodge. Both of those links and the amazon adds on this page, give me a tiny portion of the sales if you use the links. Any little bit helps to fund my blog.

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Sourdough Walnut English muffins

Prep Time

1 d

 

Walnuts and sourdough make an incredible variation on English muffins, toasted on a cold winter’s morning or anytime. These walnut studded English Muffins are a treat.

Course: Baking, Breakfast, english muffins, Sourdough

Cuisine: American

Keyword: breakfast ideas, english muffins, sourdough

Ingredients

The Night Before

• 1 cup proofed sourdough starter
• 2 tablespoons honey or barley malt syrup
• 2 cups milk from reconstituted powdered milk (or regular milk, brought just to boiling and cooled to room temperature )
• 4 cups unbleached white flour

The Next Morning

• 1 -2 cup unbleached white flour
• 2 teaspoons salt preferably sea salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 cups coarsely chopped walnuts
• 1/4 cup cornmeal for sprinkling
• Butter, for frying them

Instructions

1. The night before you want to make English muffins.
2. If you are using fresh milk, heat the milk to just barely boiling and let cool to room temperature. If you are using the powdered milk, stir enough powdered milk into the water to make 2 cups.
3. In a large non-metallic bowl, mix together the starter, honey or malt syrup, milk, and the 4 cups of flour. Mix just until thoroughly combined and all the flour has been incorporated.

4. Cover with a clean towel or plastic wrap and let sit overnight at room temperature, 10 to 12 hours. It doesn’t have to be exact. The mixture will rise to more than double and probably fall.

5. The next morning.: Add the mixture to the bowl of your mixer, or you can do all this by hand., Add the 1 ½ cups of flour, the baking soda, and the salt. Knead briefly to combine. Then add the 2 cups of chopped walnuts.
6. Knead for 5 minutes, until the dough comes together and begins to form a smooth ball. The dough will still be sticky and still very wet, you don’t want it as stiff as bread dough.
7. Heavily sprinkle some cornmeal on a big piece of wax paper to place the muffins on to rise.
8. Flour a work surface and pat or roll the dough out ½ inch thick.
9. Cut the dough with a floured 3 to a 4-inch cutter. If you want huge ones, go for the 4” But, the standard is 3

10. Re-flour the cutter between each cut. Place each cut muffin onto the cornmeal, placing them 2 inches apart or more, as they will expand.

11. Sprinkle some extra cornmeal over the tops of each muffin.

12. Let rise for 1 - 1 1/2 hours, or until almost doubled and puffy.

13. When the Muffins have risen, heat a griddle or flat-bottomed skillet to medium heat. You can heat more than one pan if you have them. You want the muffins to cook all the way through, so don’t heat the pans beyond Medium.
14. Melt a little butter on the griddle, about 1 tablespoon or so depending on the size. Being careful not to overcrowd the pan, carefully place several muffins on the hot griddle or skillet. It might be easier to lift each one using a spatula.
15. Fry the muffins in the butter for 4-5 minutes until the bottoms are nicely browned.
16. Flip the muffins and fry on the other side for 4 to 5 more minutes until the muffins are nicely browned on the other side. You may have to adjust the heat so as not to cook them too quickly. If you are unsure if they are cooked through, you can use an instant-read thermometer inserted in the side to check the temperature, it should read around 200°.
17. Let cool on a rack while you cook the remaining muffins.
18. To split them properly, insert a fork around the edge every inch or so until you have gone around the whole muffin. It should come apart in two. You can use a serrated knife, but it won’t have all the nooks and crannies.