English Muffins

Home-made, Sourdough English Muffins

Certain things are just hard to find over here.
While I hesitate to actually complain, the food and variety here is still quite amazing, but certain comfort foods just aren't on the local shelves.

English muffins for example.
Used to be I had to bring in 2-3 packages in my suitcase; I hear they show up from time to time in the supermarket/specialty stores but I shy away from the supermarket these days. While the home oven isn't great ( I miss the wood oven I built in Santa Cruz) I still make bread and cookies and have been keeping a sourdough starter alive since we moved back to Florence.
So time to pull out the sourdough starter from the fridge and cruise the internet for food blogs.

Sure enough; "Wild Yeast" (wildyeastblog.com)had some great photos and a recipe for sourdough English muffins.
While the taste wasn't quite "Thomason's" it was close enough to satisfy the homesick-for-trash-food-void while being infinitely more tasty and nutritious.
And since they're made with local eggs; organic flour (a mix of semolina, soft wheat, and kamut) and my sourdough starter I know that they're real food.

Fork split and toasted with fresh butter and fig jam for me.
The boys instead went for my version of the fast-food breakfast muffin.

While we haven't stepped foot in a McDonalds or BurgerKing for years, I did enjoy making my own version of the Egg McMuffin:

Free range egg, romaine lettuce, home-made English Muffin and Lonzo di Maiale (truffle-infused pork loin from our foray to San Miniato last weekend that B smuggled into the house).

Four muffins went to the American Aunt who lives down the lane, and the remaining 8 vanished quickly.