Oh, English muffins.
So delicate, so delicious.
My very favorite breakfast (or lunch) is a toasted English muffin with an over-easy egg and a slice of avocado. Amazing.
And as it turns out, they're pretty easy to make.
I looked at a bunch of recipes, a lot of which involve making a kind of batter and frying it in metal rings.
Ain't nobody got time fo dat.
So I worked off of a recipe from Budget Bytes.
The only change I made was to substitute whole wheat flour for half of the flour.
Ingredients:
1 tsp. active dry yeast
1 Tbs. sugar
1/2 cup warm water
1/2 cup milk
2 Tbs. butter
1.5 cups whole wheat flour
1.5 cups all purpose flour
3/4 tsp. salt
1/4 cup cornmeal
oil
1. Mix together the yeast, sugar, and water.
Let it sit for 5 minutes or so until it starts getting frothy. Yum, right?
(I love the smell of yeast, tell me I'm not the only one...)
2. Melt the butter in the milk.
3. Mix the flour and salt together, then add the milk mix and the yeast mix. It will be a sticky dough.
Add flour by 1/4 cup of a time until the dough becomes more solid and pulls away from the bowl. (I only added 1/2 cup more of flour.)
4. LIGHTLY flour your work surface and start kneading your dough. You don't want to over work the dough or use too much flour, or you'll end up with some tough muffins. Knead for about 5 minutes.
5. Shape your dough into a ball and place it in a oiled vintage pyrex bowl*. Oil the top of the dough, and cover with plastic wrap.
*you probably don't need a vintage pyrex bowl, but I haven't tried it so I can't comment on that.
Let it rise for about an hour, or until it's doubled in size.
6. Punch that sucker down. Oil your fist first, so you don't end up with dough on your hands.
7. Cover and let rise for another hour. Now it's looking good.
8. Punch the dough down again and roll it out on a floured surface. You want it to be around 3/4 of an inch thick. I used a cookie cutter to cut my biscuits, but you could use a cup if you don't have a round one. Try and cut as many as you can out of each rolling because the dough is more difficult to roll out each time. You can see my biscuits to the left are a little wonky. Put the circles on a pan covered with cornmeal. Sprinkle more cornmeal on top of each biscuit.
9. Cover your biscuits with a damp towel and let them rise. Again.
Curse yourself for trying to make these because it's taking all freaking day and you really just want to eat one already.
10. Now it's time to cook your precious little biscuits. Be careful! You don't want to "pop" them. I deflated a few, and trust me, after all this waiting, it is a real bummer.
Heat up a skillet or frying pan, coat it with oil and transfer your biscuits to the pan.
11. Cook for 7-9 minutes on each side. You'll be able to tell when they're done, the have a hollow sound and a beautiful golden brown crust.
I made 9 English muffins from this recipe.
The don't have as many "nooks and crannies" as store bought English muffins, but they taste just as good. Trust me!
I'm waiting on another batch to rise right now. I've got eggs and avocados waiting with me too.
