This recipe works well even if your starter is kind of old and not very active
| Preferment | |
| Starter | 160 g or about 3/4–1 cup |
| Sugar | 1 tsp |
| Water | 1 cup |
| White flour* | 2 cups |
| Dough | |
| White flour* | ~1 cup (highly variable) |
| Preferment | All |
| Baking soda | 1/2 tsp |
| Salt | 1 tsp |
Preferment
- Mix the preferment ingredients 14–18 hours before mixing the dough
Mixing
- Mix baking soda and salt into preferment
- If you have additional starter scraps (from a second feeding, totally optional), feel free to add them
- Knead in ~1 cup flour; stop adding flour as soon as dough is workable
- Wash hands
- Do a quick knead for 5 min; do not add too much flour! Wet dough = nooks and crannies in your final muffins. It’s okay to be sloppy with this recipe!
Shaping and Rising
- Flour work surface and roll out dough with rolling pin until it’s ½ to ¾ inch thick
- Cut out muffins with cookie/biscuit cutter; place on surface lightly sprinkled with cornmeal or semolina (cornmeal burns if you use too much!)
- Cover and keep somewhere warm; it’s best to use a plastic container or a cake pan with damp towel over it (not plastic wrap) to avoid the muffins sticking to the cover; spritz with water if they dry out
- Let rise 1 hour—longer if they are not warm
Baking
- Preheat frying pan, hot but not overheated; pan heat is up for debate (335°F? 380–400°F?); goal is hot pan to make muffins puff up, but not so hot that they burn
- No butter! Or if you must, use only a little and put it in the pan JUST before cooking (otherwise it burns)
- Put muffins with cornmeal side down in pan (so other side can puff up)
- Cook muffins 4 minutes—pan side should brown
- Flip muffins and depress SLIGHTLY to create English muffin look
- Cook 4 minutes on other side
- Adjust stove heat if muffin cooks too fast/slow
