Sunday, February 20, 2011

{English muffins}

Since my recent obsession discovery of the website, foodgawker, I've been motivated to try some new recipes.  One that has been showing up quite a bit is for english muffins.  There are many different recipes but SURPRISINGLY most do not require baking!  I know!!  I was super surprised when I first started reading the recipes but they were all the same!  Can you say "easy?"

To start with I used the recipe from King Arthur Flour, found here.  It's very straight forward and while I used the same ingredients, I mixed everything in my Kitchen Aid mixer with the dough hook, where their recipe calls to use your bread machine.  Didn't seem to make one bit of difference.

1 3/4 cups (14 ounces) milk, warm
2 teaspoons instant yeast
2 tablespoons (7/8 ounce) granulated sugar
3 tablespoons (1 1/2 ounces) butter
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
1 large egg, lightly beaten
4 to 4 1/4 cups (17 to 18 ounces) Flour (I used 2 cups of white and 2 cups of whole wheat flour)


Mix the milk, yeast and sugar until yeast is dissolved.  Add remaining ingredients and scrape into an oiled bowl.  Let rise in a warm place for 1 hour.
 Punch down the dough and roll out to roughly 1/4" thinner than you want the finished muffin.  Cut with a 3" cutter (I used the mouth of a glass jar) and place on a cookie sheet to rest for 20 min.
 Place cut out muffins onto a griddle on semi-low heat - do not grease the griddle just dust with cornmeal - for 6-8 minutes per side or until they reach desired color and doneness (is that a word?).
 These can be refrigerated or frozen and hold up very well.
This is a pretty generous recipe, as the final photo above is about 8 shy of what it actually made.  We ate them as fast as they came off the griddle :)  Yes, they are that good!

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