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Gluten-Free Sourdough English Muffins - the quest for the perfect muffin

  First published in Kitchen Tales in Medium on 02/10/2024 

Two halves of a split English muffin topped with butter and strawberry jam sit on white dinner plate. Behind the muffins is a helping of scrambled eggs with cheese and ham.
Gluten-free homemade sourdough English muffin for breakfast for dinner (photo by author)

I have been missing my English muffins for a long time now. So I have been experimenting with some sourdough English muffin recipes. One recipe is gluten-free, and the other I am trying with a gluten-free AP flour blend.

First up is the gluten-free recipe from The Flour Farm. The recipe is nicely laid out using weight as a measurement, with the volume measures in parentheses.

I used the homemade flour blend I had made and kosher salt instead of the Himalayan pink salt. I used a couple of pinches, about 2 grams.

I don’t have muffin rings, so I did them in free form, as they suggested. The batter is like a very thick pancake batter. I used an ice cream scoop to drop it onto the griddle.

Seven free form English muffins with golden griddle marks sitting on a black table top electric griddle.
photo by author

I need to get my hands on proper muffin/crumpet rings. Making these free-form, while tasty, they couldn’t quite be split with a fork for a proper English Muffin.

A muffin sliced open showing the interior of the muffin with small holes.
Sliced with a knife English muffin (photo by author)

Even though I couldn’t split them with a fork, they still had lovely little crannies for butter to melt into.

We were having hamburgers for dinner that night, so they turned out to be not half-bad hamburger buns!

Two cheese burgers with split English muffins as the buns sit on a plate with side of crinkle cut french fries and ketchup.
photo by author

The texture was very nice, and they were soft around the edges. This recipe will be going on permanent rotation, especially once I get those muffin rings.

The next recipe came from Ninnescha Homestead and uses wheat flour, so I used a mix of the flour blend I made and some 1:1 blend I bought from Winco in the bulk bin section.

I made the recipe as written. I didn’t add the optional citric acid, and I used coarse cornmeal instead of semolina.

There is a lot more work with this recipe, but it didn’t require muffin rings.

The two cups of water called for weren’t enough for the gluten-free flour, so I added more water a little at a time until the dough didn’t feel so dry. I may have added about 2/3 of a cup of additional water. Next time I will see about adding closer to an extra cup of water.

I turned the dough into a bowl sprayed with vegetable cooking spray and covered it with plastic wrap. It then went into the oven, where I had the light on to do the first proofing.

The fun part of this recipe is I finally got to use the unflavored waxed dental floss I bought for kitchen use. After I rolled the dough into cylinders, the dental floss made slicing the dough a breeze. I also managed to get the 24 muffins the recipe makes. Next time, I will use a ruler to make sure I get more uniform-sized muffins.

Seven pieces of dough sitting on a clear plastic cutting mat with a small saucer with cornmeal in it to the left of the dough. In the bottom of the photo is a flattened piece of dough in a circular shape sitting on a piece of parchement paper.
photo by author

I originally thought to skip cutting the parchment squares but went with it. I probably can skip this next time and put them all on a sheet of parchment. Since they were sturdy enough, I could just pick them up to put them on the griddle. I skipped spraying the parchment with cooking spray; it didn’t need it, especially after dipping the muffins into the corn meal.

Two rimmed cookie sheets with flattened muffins with plastic wrap over the top occupy two oven racks.
photo by author

I put the muffins into the oven covered with plastic wrap for the second proofing.

Once they were proofed, I took them out of the oven and turned it on to preheat to 350F. I then heated my griddle, sprayed it with cooking spray, popped the muffins on to cook for about 6–7 minutes, then flipped them over for another 5 minutes.

Twelve English muffins, some with cornmeal on the top, sit on a black table top griddle. Just behind the griddle on the right is a glass container of sourdough starter.
photo by author

When the muffins had been griddled on both sides, I put them back on the baking sheet and into the oven to bake until they reached 190F internal temperature.

Once out of the oven, I let them cool on a wire rack.

Twenty four English muffins sit cooling on a wire rack set over a rimmed cookie sheet.
photo by author

The muffins were a tad bit dry around the edges, but I went ahead and managed to get one opened using the fork method. I sliced one with a knife to compare the two.

Two English muffins sit on a cutting board. They have been split open. The Two halves on the right have been sliced with a knife, showing a smooth interior. The halves of the left have been split open with a fork and show a rough texture with nooks and crannies.
photo by author

While the muffin that was sliced was okay, I definitely will be splitting the muffins with a fork in the future.

I will work on tweaking this last muffin recipe. I would like them to be softer and less dry. I might add some potato starch flour to it as I think that may give them softness around the edges like the first recipe. When I make the first recipe, I will take a note from the other recipe and pop them in the oven to make sure they are cooked through.

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