The inaugural...
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....batch of sourdough English muffins is in progress....pics soon....
Recipe (thought I posted this before but can't find it)
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I didn’t expect that they would be cooked in a skillet.
I’ll have to try them!
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Dough cut into rounds and resting:
First batch. We were concerned that they looked like they burned, but fortunately there was no charred taste.
Fork split:
Bit of butter. Num!
The lot of them. Well, after we ate a few of them:
All in all, they are quite good! I toasted one for lunch and made a Mc-wtg muffin. Beat up one egg, poured it into a crumpet ring that I had placed in a small skillet and cooked it into a round scrambled egg thingy. Warmed up a couple of slices of Costco pre-cooked bacon, slapped a piece of cheddar on the egg. Assembled and...delish! Wolfed it down and missed the opportunity to take a pic.
The high hydration dough is a little hard to work with but not impossible. I used my Lodge cast iron combo skillet (it's a skillet with a griddle-like lid) to cook them. It's the only cast iron I have. I bought it originally to bake sourdough bread, but we decided we like long loaves instead of round and I switched to a clay baker. The Lodge sat in a cabinet for quite a while, so glad it's found a new use.
Next up: Crumpets.
https://www.pantrymama.com/sourdough-crumpets/
@steve-miller - she also has a recipe for a sourdough muffin loaf if you don't want the work to roll out, cut, and cook the individual muffins.
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Dough cut into rounds and resting:
First batch. We were concerned that they looked like they burned, but fortunately there was no charred taste.
Fork split:
Bit of butter. Num!
The lot of them. Well, after we ate a few of them:
All in all, they are quite good! I toasted one for lunch and made a Mc-wtg muffin. Beat up one egg, poured it into a crumpet ring that I had placed in a small skillet and cooked it into a round scrambled egg thingy. Warmed up a couple of slices of Costco pre-cooked bacon, slapped a piece of cheddar on the egg. Assembled and...delish! Wolfed it down and missed the opportunity to take a pic.
The high hydration dough is a little hard to work with but not impossible. I used my Lodge cast iron combo skillet (it's a skillet with a griddle-like lid) to cook them. It's the only cast iron I have. I bought it originally to bake sourdough bread, but we decided we like long loaves instead of round and I switched to a clay baker. The Lodge sat in a cabinet for quite a while, so glad it's found a new use.
Next up: Crumpets.
https://www.pantrymama.com/sourdough-crumpets/
@steve-miller - she also has a recipe for a sourdough muffin loaf if you don't want the work to roll out, cut, and cook the individual muffins.
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Decided to do crumpets another time, maybe next week.
This week's experiment....sourdough bagels! Not very pretty but tasty as all get-out. The great thing is that you are encouraged to eat them when they are warm, unlike many breads that require cooling so as not to get gummy.
Recipe:
https://littlespoonfarm.com/sourdough-bagels-recipe/
I skipped feeding the starter and just used some pretty active starter that was in the refrigerator to make the dough. Seems to have worked fine. It rose nicely overnight and I made the bagels this morning.
NB: The author says "if your bagels stick". There is no "if". They stick. They were hard to peel off the parchment to put in the boiling water, and that's why they look a bit lumpy. I would do two things differently next time around. First, I would use a Silpat instead of parchment. Second, I would put a small amount of oil on the Silpat to prevent sticking.
edit: Three things. I would use the method from this next recipe to form the bagels. Cut the dough, form balls, let rise, then finish forming the bagel (make a hole in the center), boil, and bake. I think it would be easier to make a nice looking bagel.
https://www.theclevercarrot.com/2021/06/easy-homemade-sourdough-bagels/
And....who knew? There's a bagel subreddit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bagels/comments/1d2ctaz/gonna_need_to_give_this_up_unless_i_can_find_a/
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Finally got around to making crumpets.
I thought about trying to do DIY rings from tuna cans but today's cans are don't lend themselves to being made into a ring. The old ones were a open cylinder with a sealing lid on the top and one on the bottom. You could remove both and get a serviceable ring. The body and the bottom of the new cans are a single piece and only the top lid can be easily removed.
Picked these up at a thrift shop:
Interesting little beggars. Like English muffins, they are cooked in a skillet but the batter is more like pancake batter than a dough, hence the need for a ring. The leavening agent is baking powder (or soda, depending on the recipe). I think my baking powder is old and has lost its oomph. I didn't get the numerous bubbles one expects in a crumpet. Still, they were pretty tasty and not bad for my first attempt:
eta: This King Arthur recipe looks better than the one I used.
https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/blog/2020/03/23/sourdough-crumpets
Will try it out for round 2 of crumpets.
