I recently won dinner to Le Bernardin (courtesy of a Twitter contest). But then I learned pastry chef Michael Laiskonis was leaving in January 2012, before the date of my awarded reservation. Bummer! I love this guy.

Anyway, this past Sunday I decided to put some time into Chef Laiskonis’s English Muffin formula, using straight sourdough. Michael’s English Muffins have a bit of milk powder, which I didn’t have, so I split the liquids into half milk and water in the final dough, using 30 percent levain. Michael uses yeast and scrap bits from a previous batch to add into the muffin recipe like “old dough.” The shape he proposes is more in line of a small ciabatta. His formula is perfect, so here’s the link!