Blue Goose Sourdough Streusel Muffins

It’s the middle of summer and too warm for long, high temperature bread baking sessions, so we need to find other opportunities for creating baked goods from our sourdough culture at feeding time. We keep it in the fridge and pretty thick but it still needs to eat every month or so. We just got back from a long road trip, taking the grandkids back to Texas, after they spent a month with us here in Emerald City. So our wild, High Plains yeast were screaming to be fed.

On the trip to Texas, we meandered through the Ozarks in NW Arkansas, looking for waterfalls but it’s been pretty dry, so the waterfall hunting didn’t go all that well. We stayed over in Eureka Springs for a few days to do a little reconnaisance of the region. We’ve been all around Eureka Springs but never spent any time there. We were under the heat dome though, so any exploration needed to get done early or late in the day because it was uncomfortably hot any other time.

While we were on an early morning walking tour of the little tourist town, I had a muffin with the morning coffee at a little coffee shop. It was a Blueberry muffin with a Streusel topping, and as we sat and talked with the proprietor about roasting coffee beans and the local bakeries, I enjoyed it. I thought to myself – I have to try making some of these, they’re awesome. I remember my Mom making her apple pie that had a beautiful crumb topping but I have never really tried it. That’s about to change.

Of course once I got started crafting a recipe, the concept of sourdough immediately began to formulate in my prefrontal cortex. The gooseberry bushes were loaded with fruit too, so in a perfect storm of ripening fruit and a fascination with streusel topped muffins I came up with the following recipe; “Blue Goose Sourdough Streusel Muffins.”

The grain bill is our present goto for sweet breads; equal parts soft white winter wheat, spelt and all-purpose flour. Plenty of eggs and protein powder too. That’s to help me feel better about gorging on them, I suppose. The Kion whey isolate is so tasty though, I just love using it in baked goods.

I still have some work to do on crafting the Streusel. I wish Mom was still around so I could ask her what the secret was; hers was so chunky and crumbly, just like the muffins in Eureka Springs. I think it must be all about cutting in the butter. Next time, I am going to try incorporating cooled, melted butter into the dry ingredients and maybe add a few nuts – everything’s better with nuts, right?

We use a silicone muffin pan and it’s the best thing since sliced bread. No worries about lubricating it, no issues with sticking muffins. They just pop right out. I want a jumbo size though. The twelve holer we have makes nice little muffins, just right for most folks but after enjoying the super sized Blueberry Streusel in Eureka Springs, I want to create big ones too. There’s more real estate to cover with buttery, sweet, crumbly Streusel.