Duplication of Bay's English Muffin
Hello fellow bakers,
As I continue my quest for a recipe that duplicates the Bay's English Muffin, my search on the TFL forum takes me back to around 2015 as the latest endeavors for a English muffin recipe that might in some way duplicate the Bay's muffins. Although there are many great recipes based on taste, and many of which I have tried, they just don't result in the light breakfast muffin with the large nooks and crannies like the Bay's muffin. Many recipes lean towards the use of whole wheat flour and even some have incorporated a bit of rye flour in their recipes. All resulting in great taste, but tend to be dense and void of the large nooks and crannies. Resulting in what I'd call a bread muffin. I believe that in order to duplicate Bay's muffin, one has to go more in the direction of a wet batter dough and the use of muffin rings. More of a pancake batter consistency. Interestingly some recipes use white vinegar. I'm wondering if one were to take a wet batter that has proofed over night and has incorporated the use of white vinegar in its composition, was to have a small amount of baking soda whipped into the batter just before ladling the batter into rings would result in the large nooks and crannies? As kids I'm sure we've all played with baking soda and vinegar to get that explosive reaction!
So if any of you great bakers have discovered the holy grail to the Bay's recipe and are willing to share it, you would be doing mankind a great service. As I mentioned above, the English muffin activity search takes me back to around 2015 and after that any interest in English muffin recipes has seemed to cease for the moment. Thank you all.
With or without rings, my experience suggests that a very soft dough yields the best texture. Too dry/stiff and you wind up with a flattish bun. Too wet/batter and you wind up with crumpets (not a bad thing, but not an EM, either).
The EMs also need a good proof after cutting. They need to have bubbles that can expand into those nooks and crannies when the muffins are heated on the griddle. I'd look for at least a 50% rise, maybe even a full doubling in height before cooking.
Paul
... that English muffins are difficult because you must catch them on the rise.
Before I knew that, I made an English muffin recipe of Emeril’s. And it was phenomenal.
And I’ve not been able to duplicate it since.
My recollection is that it used dry milk powder... it was pretty simple, actually.
I am definitely not trying to discourage. But boy, this baking thing can be finicky sometimes.
The list of ingredients on the Bay's package, lists malted barley flour, which I thought was already in white flour. It also listed potato flour, both in quantities of 2% or less. One other ingredient I found interesting was Ammonium Chloride which is used as a dough improver. It is used to super-power yeast in bread so it can improve the proliferation of yeast cells which in turn, make more CO2 for the bread to rise. Perhaps this is the secret to getting the large nooks and crannies. So then my question to all you bread experts is, have you ever used Ammonium Chloride (food grade) in your baking? On another note, I've run across recipes that use white vinegar in the recipe, as well as recipes that use baking powder. I do have some white vinegar powder which I'm going to try in a recipe along with some baking powder which I'd hope the two would combine with the liquid in the recipe and give the same reaction as the Ammonium Chloride creating more CO2. That being more gas production resulting in the larger nooks and crannies. I've tried the attached recipe and followed the video in this article with some promising success. It has taken me away from the bread density muffin and more towards the Bay's example. Although it is the highest hydration dough that I've worked with to date in trying to come up with a clone English muffin, it does seem to need work on the nooks and crannies. https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/bas-best-english-muffins Any thoughts on my line of thinking with this experiment would be greatly appreciated.