Continuing with my seasonal shift in homesteading—winter and early spring being prime time for sourdough and other baking projects—this past week I hopped on Zoom with my bestie and we taught ourselves how to make sourdough English muffins. This is quite an easy recipe with very delicious results. While our sourdough English muffins didn’t turn out quite as airy and fluffy as traditional English muffins, the end result was pretty bang-on perfect.

After we let our English muffins cool for a bit, we proceeded to make Eggs Benedict for brunch—a toasted English muffin, topped with ham or bacon, topped with a poached egg, and smothered in hollandaise sauce. It was—chef’s kiss—perfect!

To tackle this recipe, you will need an active sourdough starter. If you’re new to the world of sourdough, you can find my guide to creating your starter here.

While English muffins do have some milk in them, you can make them dairy-free / vegan by swapping out the milk with a milk alternative. I didn’t have milk on hand so I used unsweetened almond milk and got great results.

How to make sourdough English muffins

As mentioned above, you will need an active and bubble sourdough starter. If you’re new to sourdough or haven’t made a starter in a while, you’ll want to create one first using the instructions on this page. It takes about a week for a sourdough starter to really thrive and be useful. If you’re in a colder/drier climate like me, it can take a couple weeks and then it might not get really strong for quite some time. However, my bestie is in a warmer/humid climate and her starter was very active and bubbly within a couple days and could be used almost immediately.

Now, let’s learn how to make sourdough English muffins!

Step one: The night before, getting it started

Like most sourdough recipes, this is intended to be a two day project, starting the night before. In a large bowl, combine 1/2 cup of active, bubbly starter, 240 grams of flour, and 1 cup of milk (or a plant milk if preferred; I found almond milk worked fine). The recipe I was working from called for 2 cups of flour here, but I’ve found I get better results for bread if I weigh the flour. Sometimes it comes out a little too wet and I have to add flour, but it beats having a too-dry dough from too much flour when I measure by cups.

Give it all a good stir until fully combined, then cover with plastic wrap and let it sit at room temperature overnight. You could leave it longer if you want — a pastry chef once told me that the secret to a good sourdough project is a long, slow rise, so you could go 18 or even 24 hours if you want.

Step two: The next morning, adding ingredients

Add 80 grams of flour (or 3/4 cups if you’re going by volume), 1 Tbsp sugar, 3/4 tsp salt, and 1 tsp baking soda. Mix this all with a spoon or spatula. I found this came together really easily, but if your dough is a bit dry, you may need to dive in with your hands.

Step three: Knead the dough

Flour a countertop or table and roll the dough out of the bowl and onto the floured surface. Knead the dough for 4 to 5 minutes. If your dough is wet and sticky — and if you measure flour by weight like I do, there’s a good chance your dough is too wet — gradually add flour in small amounts until the dough is tacky but not sticky. It should feel like it’s sticking to your fingers when you remove your hand, but your hand comes away clean. If dough is sticking to your hand, it’s too wet.

Step four: Roll out the dough and cut it

When your dough is fully kneaded and not too sticky, use a floured rolling pin to roll it out to 3/4 inch thickness. Using a drinking glass or a round cookie or pastry cutter, cut out your English muffins and place them on parchment paper. If you have cornmeal (I didn’t), you can dust each side with a bit of cornmeal.

If, like me, you’re horrible at judging size and you end up rolling them far too thin, you can stack them together (before dusting with cornmeal). You should end up with 6-8, whereas I got 16, which told me I had made them way too thin. If you stack them, you don’t need to press them together; they will stick together when you cook them.

Let them rest for 45 minutes.

Step five: Cook the English muffins

Put a large pan on the stove and set the stove to medium heat. Let it prewarm a bit. Since I didn’t have cornmeal to dust the English muffins, I gave the pan a quick spritz of cooking spray.

Once the pan is nice and warm, cook the English muffins for 6-8 minutes per side. Keep an eye on them because if your stove runs a little hotter, you may need a shorter cooking time. My first batch took 6 minutes per side and the second took about 5 per side. They can burn a bit, so keep an eye out for that too.

Step six: Let cool and enjoy!

For best results, let the English muffins cool before cutting into them. Breads can sometimes still cook a bit with the heat retained inside and cutting them open can cause that heat to dissipate. Opening them before cooling can also allow steam to escape and make the bread a little drier.

English muffins are an integral part of Eggs Benedict, which is what we proceeded to make with these. We used my husband’s recipe for hollandaise sauce, but if you’re looking for a recipe, this one looks pretty good.