english muffins
I had some left over biga from making pain puglese last week. last night I weighed the flour left in a bag, 21 ounces. The biga amounted to about a cup and a half. I scooped that with my hand and mixed it with 16 ounces of warm water and a teaspoon of yeast and 10 grams of salt. I calculated that this gave me about 75% hydration. I mixed the dough by hand and allowed several periods of resting between turning and folding the dough 3 or 4 strokes. After about six hours I covered the dough for the night and refrigerated it, because I have learned that cold dough is not as elastic as warm dough. This morning I speard cornmeal on the table and dumped the dough spreading it to about a half inch thick. I cut rounds with an empty #2 tomato can.
Several years ago I rescued an electric griddle that had no power cord. I removed the legs and handles. It fits perfectly over two burners on my gas stove. On this I baked the muffin rounds. The heat spring was impressive. Going from the half inch cold thickness to a bit over an inch. After they have been turned I could lift them with my fingers to check the bottoms. The texture of the crumb is typical english muffin with nice holes and peaks.
The biga was quite sour and imparted that sour to the taste.
The yield was 14 pieces about 3 1/2 inches across.
Or the child of a dirty thirties poor mother. We learned to use, reuse and repurpose just about anything, and nothing gets thrown out unless its unusable for anything, and then it mostly goes to a recycle depot!
on a subsistance farm in New England. I had neighbor kids that would throw a perfectly good toy away because a wheel had come off.
don't remember how many toys I drug home and my brother or uncle fixed for me! I also drug home a burned down pot of macaroni, which my mother managed to clean, and we used for years, I still have that pot, its was a really good stainless steel pot, and we had old enamel ware with the enamel chipped off, or a single aluminum pot which mom hated to use, she didn't like aluminum.
We lived in town, but it was subsistance, brother hunted, uncle brought in produce from his garden, and sometimes meatm we picked berries when we could get to the patch, and greens from the side of the roads, ate ok, but not enough to make one fat! Mom baked bread, and we ate a lot of dried beans. Cheap but not fattening, although she was always pushing macaroni which I didn't eat! I still am not a huge fan of pasta.