Feb 03, 2026

No Fries, No Finish Line. - Sourdough English Muffins

Some lessons only reveal themselves when the effort gets uncomfortable, when the legs burn and quitting feels like the logical option. Progress in endurance sport is rarely clean or easy.

Frederick Douglass captured that reality in a single line, reminding us that the grind, the resistance, and the hard miles are not obstacles to improvement, they are exactly where it happens.

The Warm Up

Big goals matter. They give direction, create focus, and pull you forward when motivation fades. But the accomplishment itself is rarely what changes you. Crossing a finish line or hitting a milestone is a moment. Who you become on the way there is the lasting reward.

Most of your life is not lived at the summit. It is lived on the long, grinding sides of the mountain. Early mornings. Quiet sacrifices. Unseen discipline. That is where patience is learned. That is where humility, resilience, and grit are formed. If you only celebrate arrival, you will miss the work that actually shapes you.

Respect the climb. Stay present in the process. The mountain does not build you at the top, it builds you on the way up.

Show up! Put in the work! Regroup! Put in the work! Don't quit! Believe in yourself! Develop your skills! Process > outcome! Be okay with uncomfortable! Compete!

The Journey

Slow seasons have a funny way of creating space for projects that have been sitting on the back burner for years. This one has been on mine for a long time.

Over the past several years, I’ve shared this newsletter and a lot of recipes alongside it. From time to time, I’ll reference a previous edition or mention a recipe I shared a while back. One frustration I’ve always had is that I couldn’t easily link back to those older posts. If you weren’t around back then, or if you simply forgot about it, there wasn’t a great way to revisit it without digging through old emails.

This shows up most often with recipes. I might share a dish and say it pairs well with something I’ve shared before, but I can’t realistically include both recipes in the same newsletter without making it too long or repetitive.

I finally sat down and solved that problem.

I’ve built a dedicated page on the site where every newsletter and recipe will live in an archive. I’m in the process of uploading them now. It’s a slow process since they have to be added one by one, but now that the format and home are set, I’m adding one archive per day. At the moment, the most recent 9 to 10 editions are live.

You can see the archive page here.

One small detail I’m excited about. In the title of each archived post, I’m including that week’s recipe. That way, if you ever want to go hunting for a past recipe, you can scan the list without clicking into every post to see what’s inside.

Going forward, every recipe, both new and archived, will also be linked to a printable PDF. You’ll be able to save it or print it out easily when you want to try it at home. It also means I can link directly to past recipes in future newsletters. If I share a taco recipe and want to suggest a salsa I’ve shared before, I can link straight to that salsa PDF so you can review it in seconds.

It’s a small upgrade, but one I think will make the newsletter more useful, easier to navigate, and more fun to revisit over time.

Meal Time

Pies, cakes, pastries, and especially fresh bread are some of my favorite things to eat. A good, tangy sourdough loaf might be near the top of that list. They also happen to make the house smell incredible while they’re baking.

I don’t shy away from complex meals, as you’ve probably noticed from some of the recipes I’ve shared over the years. So you’d think I’d be fully committed to sourdough starters and baking fresh bread at home. For whatever reason, I never have been.

I’ve had starters before. I’d feed them, try to keep them alive, forget about them, then eventually throw them away. That cycle finally ended once we started getting the Wild Grain bread box every month. With a freezer full of really good sourdough that goes straight from frozen to the table in about 25 to 30 minutes, I didn’t feel much urgency to bake my own.

Then my wife came home the other day with a sourdough starter from one of the women she works out with. She decided she wanted to keep it and actually make something with it. For context, my wife is not really a kitchen person. If something happened to me tomorrow, our kids would be living on cereal and salad.

She asked if I’d help her make English muffins using the starter. I expected it to be complicated. It wasn’t overly complex, but it was time consuming. The dough proofs overnight, and the muffins cook slowly on low heat so the outside doesn’t burn while the inside finishes cooking. I also learned that English muffins are cooked in a skillet, not baked, which somehow I had never really thought about.

In the end, they were excellent. Especially with a pat of butter and some apple butter.

Enjoy this one if you have a starter handy. It’s worth the time.

Sourdough English Muffins

Ingredients

1 cup active sourdough starter, fed and bubbly
1 cup milk, room temperature
2 tablespoons sugar or honey
2 tablespoons melted butter or oil
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
Cornmeal or semolina for dusting

Instructions

1. Mix and ferment
In a large bowl, mix the starter, milk, sugar, and butter. Add the flour and salt and stir until a soft, slightly sticky dough forms. Cover and let ferment at room temperature for 8 to 12 hours, until puffy and airy.

2. Shape
Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Gently pat it to about 1/2-inch thickness. Cut into rounds using a biscuit cutter or glass. Dust both sides with cornmeal. Cover and let rest for 30 to 60 minutes.

3. Cook
Heat a skillet or griddle over low to medium-low heat and lightly grease it. Cook the muffins for 6 to 8 minutes per side, flipping once, until golden brown and cooked through. Internal temperature should be around 200°F. Adjust heat as needed to prevent burning.

4. Cool and split
Let the muffins cool completely, then split with a fork to preserve the nooks and crannies.

Notes

For a tangier flavor, ferment closer to 12 hours
For extra nooks and crannies, keep the dough slightly wetter
These freeze well and can be toasted straight from frozen

This is What I Heard

Over the past few weeks, I’ve shared a couple of random hard things that caught my attention. Burrito League. The Antarctica Triathlon. Once you start looking at challenges like that, the algorithm clearly decides it knows who you are and just keeps leaning in.

While the Antarctica Triathlon might be objectively insane, I’m not sure this one isn’t somehow even crazier.

A young bloke from New Zealand decided to see how many loops he could complete around a McDonald’s car park in 24 hours. No scenery. No changing terrain. Just asphalt, painted lines, and the glow of the golden arches, over and over again.

It’s one thing to suffer somewhere epic and remote. It’s another thing entirely to choose monotony as the challenge. Same loop. Same turns. Same temptation to stop and sit down with fries.

There’s something oddly fascinating about that kind of effort. Strip away the adventure, the destination, and the bragging rights, and you’re left with a very honest test of patience, discipline, and the willingness to keep going when nothing changes.

Which might be the hardest challenge of all. Especially since the McDonald’s was actually closed. It was Christmas Day. No fries after all.