Borrowed Recipes, Shared Tables: What Sourdough English Muffins Taught Me About Community

Learning From Other Hands

Most of the recipes I bake now were born in my own kitchen. They came from years of trial and error, stained notebooks, and more than a few loaves that ended up as croutons. But not everything began with me. Some of my favorite bakes started in someone else’s bowl, in someone else’s hands.

Our sourdough English muffins are one of those.

The recipe that has quickly become my most requested item did not fall from the sky onto my counter. It came from another baker. Her name is Bim, and she shares her knowledge and her recipes with a generosity that feels rare and beautiful in a world that often clings tightly to its secrets.

I printed her recipe, read through her notes, and walked right back into the role of beginner.

The Humility of Starting With Someone Else’s Recipe

As bakers, it is easy to feel we must invent everything ourselves. That “real” artistry comes only from original creations. But that is not how bread, or tradition, actually works.

Almost everything we bake comes from somewhere. A grandmother’s card file. A neighbor’s scribbled note. A recipe shared across a counter after church. A blog post from a stranger who took the time to write it all down.

When I started working with Bim’s English muffin recipe, I burned a few. I underbaked a few. I overproofed some and squeezed others into pans that were a little too crowded. I took notes on what worked in my oven, in my climate, with my starter. I asked, “What if I adjust the fermentation here?” and “What happens if I change the heat just a bit?”

Slowly, that borrowed recipe began to feel at home in my kitchen. It carried Bim’s wisdom and structure, but it also started to hold my own rhythms and preferences. It became something shared, not stolen. A conversation between two bakers who may never knead dough in the same room, yet are still working together.

The Generosity of Bakers Who Share

I am deeply grateful for bakers like Bim who open their notebooks and say, “Here, try this.” They are not afraid that someone else’s success will diminish their own. Instead, they understand that good bread is meant to travel. It is meant to grow.

Their sharing allows more people to taste something wonderful. It allows more homes to fill with the smell of warm dough. It invites more tables to hold something that was made with care.

In my own journey, this kind of generosity has been a lifeline. When sourdough first found me in a season of grief and rebuilding, I learned from strangers on the internet as much as from my own experiments. People I had never met were willing to explain, to troubleshoot, to offer recipes and methods that had taken them years to refine.

They gave it away so that someone like me could begin again.

Making It My Own, Without Making It Mine Alone

Over time, I have adjusted Bim’s recipe so it works in my space. I have played with timing, handling, and little touches that suit my starter and schedule. Customers have tasted them and asked for more. Many have said, “These are the best English muffins I’ve ever had.”

That humbles me. It also reminds me to say, out loud and clearly, that I did not create this from nothing. I am standing on another baker’s shoulders.

I believe there is a way to honor both parts. I can be proud of the care I take in mixing, fermenting, shaping, and cooking each muffin. I can also be honest about where the bones of the recipe began, and give thanks for the one who first did the hard work of writing and testing it.

Good things grow when we refuse to hoard them.

The Table Is Big Enough for All of Us

Bread has always been a communal food. It is shared, broken, passed from hand to hand. It is rarely eaten alone. The same can be true of the craft of baking itself.

When we share recipes, methods, stories, and even mistakes, we widen the table. We make room for more people to learn, to bake, to feed the people they love. We move from competition to community.

These sourdough English muffins are a small symbol of that. They began in another baker’s kitchen. They traveled through her generosity into mine. From here, they travel again, to your tables and your toasters and your quiet mornings with coffee.

My hope is that you feel that lineage in every bite. That you sense the invisible community of hands behind them, all saying the same thing in their own way:

Here. Take this. Make it your own. Then share it on.

Warmly,
Kathy
Art of The Crumb

Bim’s Sourdough English Muffins Recipe

1,200 g. Bread flour

760 g. Milk

300 g. Sourdough starter or Discard one week old

80 g. Honey or sugar

22 g. Salt

3 eggs

Mix everything in a large bowl followed with 4 sets of stretch and fold  every 30 minutes (2 hours)

Proof another 2 hours or until it rises 70% at 75º degrees.

Option one same day bake- cut the dough into 110 g. Or your preference size and bake.

Option two retard over night, cold retard gives the bread nice flavor.

In the morning cut the dough into size of your preference and mine are 110 g. (24 English muffins) making ball I use a lot of flour to handle them, rest dough on the countertop to proof another 2 hours or until double in size.

Oven Bake 400º

Before baking, cover each ball with individual cup (one cup size) find some heavy pot to put on top and bake for 20 minutes

Traditional bake.

Heat up the pan on medium low, put muffins in and covered the lid for 4-6 minutes each side or cook until golden brown, then transfer the English muffins into the baking tray and bake in the oven or air flyer another 4 minutes at 375º This way you avoid uncooked centers.