Sourdough English Muffin Bread

Sourdough English muffin loaf on parchment paper with three slices of bread next to a bowl of butter with a butter knife.

Sourdough English Muffin Bread

All the flavor of sourdough English muffins in a super easy to shape sandwich loaf! This is such a simple way to get more of that English muffin goodness into your weekday breakfast routine!

Course Breakfast

Cuisine American, English

Keyword Sourdough Discard, Sourdough Recipes

Prep Time 15

Cook Time 45

Fermentation Time 12

Total Time 13

Servings Loaf

Calories 121kcal

Equipment

Mixing Bowl
2 Loaf Pans (I've used a 1.5 pound USA Pans - you'll need 2 pans exactly the same so that one can be used as a lid to create steam around your loaf).

Ingredients

200 g Sourdough Starter (fed and bubbly)
500 g Milk (cold is better for overnight ferment)
600 g Bread Flour
12 g Salt
20 g Honey (you can use sugar if you want to)
50 g Cornmeal (for dusting)

Instructions

In a large glass bowl, mix together all of the ingredients, including your sourdough starter and bring it together to form a dough. The dough will be quite sticky. Gently knead the dough to bring it together.
Once you have a dough formed, cover it in plastic wrap and set aside for around 12 hours to ferment at room temperature (see notes). You want the dough to rise (it doesn't need to double though). It should rise at least half in the bowl and become a smoother, structured dough (see the pics above of my dough). It's important that the dough maintains its gluten structure in order to be shaped into a loaf.
Just like traditional sourdough bread, you'll need to watch the dough, rather than the clock.
Once you're happy with the dough, you can wet your hands and gently shape your dough into a rough ball by performing a set of stretch and folds. This will deflate the dough - but don't worry.
Now leave the dough to rest for around 30 minutes.
While the dough is resting, grab a loaf pan and lightly grease it with butter or oil (whatever you're comfortable with is fine). Lightly dust the inside of greased pan with corn meal).
Dust your work surface with corn meal and then ease the dough out of the bowl so it lands on the counter with the sticky side up.
Gently press the dough into a rectangle using your hands and then roll it up into a log or loaf shape. At this point, I like to roll my dough in cornmeal so that it gets that English Muffin texture when it bakes. Place the dough into the loaf pan your prepared earlier. Cover the pan and allow the dough to rise up and over the lip of the pan (you're looking for it to double now and get a nice rounded shape on top).
When you're ready to bake your sourdough English muffin loaf, preheat your oven to 180C (350F). Once the oven is at temperature, take a second loaf pan the same as the first and spray the inside of it with water, place this on top of the pan with your dough in it and place this inside your oven. Bake for 30 minutes. Then remove the loaf pan "lid" and bake for a further 10 minutes to color the top of the loaf (you can increase the temperature here if you need to (sometimes I increase my temperature to 200C (390F) to get a better color on the crust).
Once golden brown, remove from the oven and carefully remove from the loaf pan to cool on a wire rack.

Notes

A few notes on the fermentation times: It's ok to leave the mixture at room temperature, even though it has milk in it. The good bacteria in your sourdough starter will protect your dough.

If your house is very warm, leave it to ferment at room temp for half the time and then put it in the fridge to avoid it over fermenting. You could also reduce the amount of starter down to 100g too.

The dough can be kept in the fridge for up to 3 days after the initial fermentation has occurred at room temp.

Baking with 2 Loaf Pans: I've used a second loaf pan to create a lid when baking this loaf because sourdough English muffins are traditionally baked in a skillet with a lid to create steam, encouraging them to puff up and become light and fluffy inside. The second loaf pan on top does a similar thing for this loaf.

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