Sourdough English Muffins

Another recipe found online and modified. I found the original recipe on the Sourdough Home web site and then I modified it somewhat to use whole wheat. If you don't have whole wheat, you can just use all bread flour, and they will still be delicious. John says they are the best he has ever tasted, even better than store bought Bays or Thomas!

Sponge Ingredients:
3/4 cup sourdough starter
2 tablespoons honey
2 cups milk, skim
2 cups bread flour
2 cups whole wheat flour

Dough:
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cup bread flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons sea salt
2 tablespoons cornmeal

The Night Before:
Prepare the sponge. Mix sour starter, honey and milk in mixing bowl until smooth. Mix the dry flours together. Add the 4 cups of flour, 2 cups at a time, and mix in until all the flour thoroughly wet. Cover with clean towel and leave at room temperature in a draft free place overnight. I let the sponge develop in the oven with the light turned on. Just be sure the oven is at room temperature when you put it in the oven. I put a dish towel in the door to prop it open because the light bulb alone can raise the temperature to close to 90° degrees and this will kill the natural bacteria sourdough needs to grow.

The Next Morning:
Make the dough. Stir down the sponge (it will have risen considerably). If it has risen too high and fallen, no problem, just stir down the rest of the way. Sprinkle a scant teaspoon of baking soda and 2 teaspoons of sea salt over the surface of the dough and work it in. Mix the 3/4 cup of white & 3/4 cup of wheat flours together. Flour your board with half of this flour mixture or more (up to 2 cups), until dough is medium stiff - enough to roll out. Once you have enough flour in (I go by feel-never too dry and always moist) and the dough longer sticks to your hands, give it a 5 minute kneading.

Get 2 baking sheets or jelly roll pans and line with waxed paper-sprinkle corn meal over both.

Flour board again and lightly roll dough to about 1/2 inch thick. Take a 3 inch round cutter (a bit larger diameter, different shapes, OK) and cut as many rounds as you can-rolling the left over dough out and cutting more until all the dough is used. Try to keep them very uniform in thickness and diameter. As you cut each round, place on cornmeal wax paper-don't allow raw muffins to touch--they will stick. When all rounds are cut, sprinkle corn meal over tops
of muffins.

Allow to rise in warm place, covered, for about an hour or until risen again (I have left them to rise for as much as 3 hours. The time really depends on your environment). Again, I let them rise in a cool oven, with the light turned on and a dish towel wedged in the door to prop it open and prevent anyone from closing it. Remember, just the light bulb can raise the temperature to close to 90° degrees, much too warm for the final rise.

Now the FUN part!
Preheat a griddle (I used a non stick electric griddle, or skillet, with the temperature set to just under 300° with a TINY bit of butter, until butter sizzles. Use a low flame or heat setting so the inside of the muffin bakes and outside does not burn. Pan bake one side for about 4-5 minutes and turn. Squish down a bit with spatula and pan bake other side for about 4-5 minutes. Turn only once so be sure the one side is cooked before turning. While you can skip the butter if you have a non-stick skillet, they won't taste as good without it! If you want bigger holes and crevices in the muffins, let them rise a bit longer (2 or 3 hours).

Yield: 24 Muffins
1 Muffin Per Serving: 131 Calories; 1g Fat (4.3% calories from fat); 5g Protein; 27g Carbohydrate; 2g Dietary Fiber; trace Cholesterol; 221mg Sodium. Exchanges: 1 1/2 Grain(Starch); 0 Non-Fat Milk; 0 Fat; 0 Other Carbohydrates.

Sourdough

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Sourdough Cinnamon Pecan Rolls

Ingredients:

Dough
2 cups sourdough starter
1 small 5 ounce can of evaporated milk
1 large egg slightly beaten at room temperature
6 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
4 cups of all purpose flour

Cinnamon Sugar Topping
4 tablespoons melted butter
1/2 cup sugar mixed with 1 tablespoons ground cinnamon
1 cup pecan pieces

Directions:

Making Dough
Scald evaporated milk, remove from heat and stir in the butter until melted. Mix the milk and butter mixture with the sourdough starter and gradually add the egg, sugar, salt and half of the all purpose flour (2 cups). Mix well with electric mixer using the paddle attachment for a few minutes, then let it stand for 30 minutes so that all the flour is absorbed. Exchange the paddle attachment for the dough hook and knead in the remaining 2 cups of flour. Knead for at least 5 minutes. The dough will be moist, this is normal.

Place the dough into a well-oiled bowl and oil the top. Cover with a tea towel or plastic wrap and put it somewhere that it’s not drafty, between 65° and 85° F. and let it rise. Check it every 30 minutes and until it is about 1½ to 2 times its original size. Test the rise by pushing your finger into the dough about one-half to three-quarters of an inch. If the dough springs back and fills the hole within a minute or so, then it isn't finished with its first rise. If most of the indentation remains, you're ready to proceed to the next step.

Shaping and Baking
Push your closed fist gently into the middle of the dough all the way to the bottom of the container, then gently push the outside parts of the dough into hole you created in the middle. This is called ‘punching down’ the dough and serves to rearrange the gluten strands to encourage a proper second rise. Now dump the dough out of the bowl and on to the counter. Gently knead and stretch the dough on a lightly floured surface into a rectangular shape approximately 10"x 16". Brush the dough with the melted butter, and sprinkle with 2/3 of the cinnamon sugar. Top with pecans. Now gently roll the dough lengthwise into a cylindrical shape. Slice the dough with a dough cutter into rounds about 1¼ inch thick. Arrange the rounds so they are almost touching in a well-oiled baking pan.

Cover the rolls with a tea towel or plastic wrap that has been sprayed with Pam. Place the baking pan in a warm (65°-80° F) non-drafty place again for the second rise. This rising could take from 1½ to 3 hours depending on the room temperature and the dough. Expect sourdoughs to rise much more slowly than breads made with commercial yeasts.

Preheat the oven to 350° F. When the unbaked rolls are about two times their original size, it’s time to bake. Sprinkle the remaining cinnamon sugar over the top of the rolls and place them in the oven, on the center rack, to back for 30 minutes or until golden brown.

Rolls can be frosted with a powdered sugar glaze if desired.

Yield: 12 rolls

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John's Zephyr Buns

My Zephyr Buns “secret” was the result of a case of carelessness. I didn’t read the recipe instructions prior to starting the mixing. I slapped everything together and noticed immediately that the un-kneaded dough was WAY too wet. Went back to the book and finally read everything. Oh, drat … one of the 3 eggs was supposed to be ON the buns – not IN them! Rather than chunk the whole mess in the trash, I went ahead and kneaded it, baked it & served it to my favorite guinea pigs. That would be y’all .

WOW, everyone liked them!

After several batches, I figured out that there are some oddities of the recipe / soft dough that warrant passing along:

• The recipe is more successful with “Better For Bread” flour; or, hard red winter wheat flour, if you can find it. This is a trade off. Cake flour would make the crumb even softer but the higher gluten “hard red” gives the soft dough enough structure to rise better. Regardless, plain old all purpose flour will work O.K. if that’s all you can get.
• Be sure to use regular yeast – not one of the quickie versions now becoming popular. “Active” is fine. That doesn’t mean “quick”.
• Ingredients (especially eggs) should be at room temperature before starting.
• At first, the dough will be so sticky that you’ll think that you’ll never get it off your hands. Therefore, I usually start out using only one hand for kneading, keeping the other hand “clean” so that I can hold the bowl and reach for a little extra flour, etc., if I need it.
• Initially, kneading might amount to squeezing the dough between your fingers (like playing with mud) for a while, until enough gluten forms for the mess to pull together into a ball that you can knead in the regular way. I usually don’t take the ball out of the mixing bowl while kneading. Just smack it around where it lies.
• Do both the first rising in and especially the bun rise in a spot that is pleasantly warm, i.e., 75 to 95F (24-35C) and draft-free. This is structurally delicate dough. It can fall, like a cake. Watch out for cold counter tops, etc. My favorite method is to take the chill off of an oven by running it only until the metal walls and racks seem warm. Then shut it off and keep the door closed while waiting a few minutes for the oven temp to equalize out. Then put the dough into the your “rising oven” and close the door. There. Bet you didn’t know that you have one of those expensive dough conditioning “proofers”. Gas ovens are way better for this than electrics, if you’re lucky enough to have one.
• Handle the risen buns VERY carefully. They’ll collapse if you slam them around.
• With the buns out on the counter (obviously,) do a long pre-heat on your oven, before doing the baking. Even wait a few minutes after the first pre-heat cycle-off occurs (flame goes out or heating element goes off). Only then, put the buns in for baking.
• Follow the baking time but watch the buns for beautiful dark tan browning. The time is only a guideline.
• Immediately out of the oven, lightly brush the bun tops with butter. Don’t use soft “spreads” because they are very high in water content and may toughen the crust rather than soften it.
• Serve warm. Eat them all. Leftovers, especially if refrigerator-cold, are icky, because of the high egg content. The crumb goes from heavenly soft when warm to “toothy” when chilled.

Funny thing: I once did the James Beard recipe, exactly as written, and the result is O.K. They are more middle-of-the-road. The crumb is not quite as much of a head-turner when warm; but, they aren’t quite as yucky as leftovers. I guess it is a trade off that you’ll have to evaluate on your own.

Serving Size: 18

Ingredients:
1 package active dry yeast
1 tablespoons warm water -- (100-115 degrees)
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
3 whole eggs* (SEE IMPORTANT COMMENT BELOW)
2 cups all-purpose flour -- sifted
1/4 cup melted butter
1 teaspoon cool water

Soften the yeast in warm water and stir in the sugar and salt to dissolve. Proof the yeast and sugar before adding the salt.In a bowl, beat 2 of the eggs and blend in the flour. Use all 3 eggs. Then stir in the yeast mixture and melted butter. Cool the butter down below “hot” before stirring it in. Knead vigorously in the bowl with the hands, till the dough leaves the sides of the bowl and is elastic - 5minutes. Make into a ball, put in a buttered bowl, and cover with plasticwrap. Make sure the bowl is big enough that the risen dough won’t touch the plastic wrap. Let rise in a warm, draft-free place for 1 1/2 hours, or till doubled in bulk. Punch down and divide into 18 equal pieces. I pinch off “ping-pong ball” sized pieces. Roll the pieces into balls and arrange, well separated, on a buttered baking sheet. Let rise 30 minutes,or until doubled in size. Inside your new proofing cabinet. Bake in a preheated oven at 375F for 10 minutes, or until nicely browned. Brush with butter. Serve warm. Cool on a rack.

Buns

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