Help save the planet by not throwing out the discarded sourdough starter. I always have different amounts of starter left over that I don't want to waste. This recipe depends entirely on how much starter you have and how many muffins you want.
This recipe assumes the starter is the standard 4:4:1 ratio of flour to water to starter, like in my bread recipe.
Inspired by https://www.pantrymama.com/sourdough-english-muffins/
We will use the sourdough starter, thats at about 100% hydration. Thus, half of it is flour, and half of it is water.
The original recipe calls for:
- 250 g of starter
- 600 g of flour
- 500 ml of milk
- 15 g of salt
- 20 g of honey
We can assume the milk is 3.25% fat (whole milk), so the dough should have 16 g of fat.
Based on these numbers, we have:
- 725.0 g of flour in total (starter is half flour by weight)
- 608.75 ml of water in total (starter is half water, and 96.75% of the milk is water.
Thus, the ratios as a percentage of total flour are:
- 83.97% hydration
- 2.07% salt
- 2.76% honey
- 2.24% fat
The original recipe is for 24 muffins, therefore each muffin needs about 30 g of flour.
Using the ratios above, we can make the recipe a function of how many muffins we want and how much starter we have.
#!/usr/bin/env python
portions = 10
starter = 150
total_flour = portions * flour_per_portion
flour = total_flour - (starter / 2)
milk = ((total_flour * hydration) - (starter / 2)) / 0.9675
fat = max(0, (total_flour * fat_ratio) - milk * 0.0325)
salt = total_flour * salt_ratio
honey = total_flour * honey_ratio
Let's say we want 10 muffins, and we have 150 g of starter. Then our ingredient list is as follows:
- 227.1 g of flour
- 184.6 g of milk
- 0.8 g of extra fat
- 6.2 g of salt
- 8.3 g of honey
- Corn Meal or Semolina for dusting
You can opt for dry milk powder or non-dairy creamers, just use water and adjust for the fat content appropriately.
The instructions are the same as the original recipe. My only advice would be to skip the fridge rise step if the flour-to-starter ratio is very low, as the quality of the dough might suffer.
- Mix all the ingredients together, knead to combine
- Let the dough rest for 15 minutes
- Stretch and fold it multiple times
- Optionally keep the dough in the fridge until you're ready to bake it
- Dust cornmeal on table
- Roll the dough out to 1/2 inch thickness
- Dust cornmeal over the dough
- Cut rounds
- Let them rise for 30 minutes on a tray
- Fry muffins, flipping them once.