The Fresh Loaf

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english muffins

weavershouse's picture
weavershouse

English MuffinsEnglish Muffins

After seeing proth5's muffins I had to try them hoping to get the nooks and crannies. I messed up totally when I tried to convert the recipe to kg so ended up guessing. After several stretch and folds I let it rise for about 1 1/2 hour. It was full of big bubbles by then and I thought I want lots of holes so why should I deflate this thing and roll out all the air bubbles. I just gently turned it out on a floured board and gently pulled it out till it was about 1 1/2 - 2" high and just cut with an inverted drinking glass. I put them on cornmeal and then right onto the hot skillet still full of air bubbles, no rise time. I didn't use rings. I was happy to see all the "butter bowls" inside. I hope I can repeat the whole thing, mistakes and all. I ended up with 18. I doubled the recipe but should have ended up with 12. Oh well. Thanks proth5 for the inspiration. They toast up great.

 

My photo is very bad.

 

 

 

PagnottaPagnotta

 

 

 

Bill Wraith's Pagnotta

Today I also made Bill Wraith's Pagnotta. This bread always works well. I was on the phone when these were proofing and they went too far. I was worried they would deflate but they didn't, they just baked into each other so I'll have to pull them apart when they cool. The recipe can be found in the SEARCH. Hope you see these Bill so I can say thanks for your recipe.

proth5's picture
proth5

No wait, strike that – reverse it.

 

Summer is here and it’s too hot to fire up the oven which makes it a perfect time to take the electric griddle outside and make English muffins.

 

The problem, of course, is getting those great nooks and crannies.  My old formula and technique got me plenty of little holes in the muffins, but not those great nooks and crannies (well, the little holes caught the melting butter, but still, the drive for “just a little better” is strong.)

 

So I thought about both my formula and my technique.

 

I was using an adaptation of the King Arthur “English Tea Cakes” recipe which calls for beating the dough for 5 minutes in a mixer.  I thought about “Batter Whipped” bread and how beating the dough caused its fine texture.  Then I thought about baguettes.

 

Well, English – French, different, but in the end – all European.  So I thought I would adapt my baguette technique for my English Muffins.

 

I use King Arthur All Purpose flour.

Makes about 6 

The formula:

 

Levain Build

Starter    .65 oz (100% hydration)

Flour      .95 oz

Water     .95 oz

 

Let ripen overnight.

 

Final Mix

All of the levain build

Flour                9.25 oz

Salt                   .16 oz

Dry Milk         1.25 oz

Sugar                .55 oz

Vegetable oil    .55 oz

Water              9.25 oz

 

Mix to a loose batter.  Four times at 30 minute intervals, stir 30 strokes with a spoon or spatula.

 

Let rise until domed and bubbly.  Do not let it collapse.  This particular batch took about 3 hours at this phase.

 

Baked in greased muffing rings on a lightly greased griddle at 325F.  8-9 mins per side.

 

The results. 

(I'm no photographer - that's for sure...) 

Finally the nooks…

weavershouse's picture
weavershouse

I finally made the English muffins, thanks browndog, etc. I made one batch with milk and one batch with buttermilk. I did add 1 TBL. olive oil and used 1/2 cup starter. Neither had open holes but still tasted very good with the buttermilk batch having a little more flavor. The picture shows the crumb (both batches looked the same inside and out). My picture is not very good and I sent my daughter home with all the nicest looking muffins. These were, as everyone who made them said, very easy indeed and very good. No more store ones for us. I used a 3" cutter and only got 7 from one batch and 8 from another. Next time I'll roll them thinner so they cook faster. I did put them in the oven for 10 min. to be sure they were cooked because they were so thick.

 

My husband brought in this 3rd big basket of red peppers from the garden. What to do with them??? I've already frozen, fried and dried so many. I decided to try making rolls with the red peppers cut in small pieces and using Asiago cheese in the dough. I mixed everything (flour, salt, yeast, o. oil, Asiago cheese, diced peppers, water) ENGLISH MUFFINS, ASIAGO/PEPPER ROLLSASIAGO CHEESE, RED PEPPER ROLLSGARDEN PEPPERSGARDEN PEPPERS  ENGLISH MUFFINSENGLISH MUFFINS  


 together and let it sit overnight. In the morning I did one stretch and fold and let it sit a half hour then divided it into 3 oz. pieces and made rolls using some tension but the dough was sticky and they were hard to shape. They were already puffy from the half hour rise and I didn't want to lose the bubbles. They rose 45 min. and baked up delicious. I baked them under cover using the rectangle roaster shown peeking out under my tray of rising rolls. Baked 15 min. under cover and 15 min. with cover off. My husband had his with Italian sausage and onions and I had one with sliced tomatoes and lettuce. Ok now....that took care of one pepper what about the rest??!!

 

 

By the way, a couple of members asked about the cow in the background in another photo. He's an antique cookie cutter from Pennsylvania. The other antique cookie cutter would be me if someone made a cookie cutter of me. Well, I exaggerate about some areas :)

 

Anyway it's good to be back baking. I've been checking in now and then and I've seen some BEAUTIFUL breads. Thanks browndog for getting me to finally try the muffins. Any new books to suggest?

JMonkey's picture
JMonkey

Even in the midst of moving, a family’s got to eat. And with the beautiful summer weather we’ve been having in New England (70 degrees F, sunny, low humidity – ah, New England, I’m gonna miss ya), I’ve been cooking an awful lot on the grill, and I finally got around to making grilled pizza. Of course, I did it with whole wheat.

I don’t have the recipe in front of me, but if there’s interest, I’ll add it in the comments sometime later. All I can say is, Peter Reinhart’s advice in American Pie is easy to follow, and makes a fantastic pie. It’s surprisingly simple to do.

To make the pie whole wheat, I simply increased the amount of water by about 2-3 Tbs per cup. I downsized the recipe to make just two pies, and smaller ones at that. A 12-15 inch pie would be too large to fit on one side of the grill, which was a necessity, since I was using the one-grill method.

The key, it seems to me, really is to rake almost all the coals to one side so that there’s a blazing hot side and relatively cool side. I shaped my pies in a rough oval, because they fit better that way, but they got deformed because, even though I slathered the back of my baking sheet with olive oil, it was still not an easy task getting the dough off the sheet and onto the grill.

I was a little too worried about burning the dough. I could have left the second pie on the grill a little bit longer and gotten a better crust. But who’s complaining? It was excellent! For cheese, I used a 50-50 mozzarella-parmesan blend, and then added dollops of goat cheese. Toppings were roasted tomatoes, roasted red bell peppers and dollops of basil pesto.



We’ll be making these again.

Friday night, I’d started refreshing Arthur, my whole wheat starter, at 1-5-5, and did so again on Saturday morning, so by Saturday night, I had about 550 grams of starter at 100%. I decided to set up three things:

  • Whole wheat sourdough hearth bread: 88% hydration with 5% of the flour pre-fermented as starter
  • Whole wheat sourdough sandwich bread: 85% hydration with 10% of the flour pre-fermented
  • Sourdough whole wheat English Muffins: I used this recipe for Sourdugh English Muffins, substituting whole wheat flour for the AP flour and adding 2 Tbs more milk. I used only 2 cups flour for the entire recipe. Good Lord these are easy!


When I woke up, I used what has come to be called “the French Fold” on both breads, and then set about making the English muffins. Did I mention that these are easy? And delicious?

Here they are set on the breakfast table:




And here’s one opened up. I was very pleased with the spongy interior!



I rolled these out a little thin, but they were still lovely. Plus I got 15 muffins, instead of just 12. Next time around, I’ll keep them thicker, though.

Here’s the whole wheat sourdough hearth bread we had for dinner. I was rushed when shaping, so I didn’t preshape and was a little rough. You can see the results in the crumb – not nearly as open as I’d like, but still good for dinner.



We had the bread with a delicious and quick-to-make asparagus-spinich pesto over whole wheat linguini and a white bean and spinach salad. (I like 101 Cookbooks a lot, and her cookbook, Super Natural Cooking, is very good, but she uses a lot of exotic, hard-to-find ingredients. For the salad dressing, I just used some lemon zest, plain olive oil and cider vinegar, and it turned out fine.)

Last, the sandwich bread. I let it ferment a bit too long, but it nevertheless turned out just fine, if a little on the sour side (which my wife says is a feature, not a bug). The blur you see is my daughter’s hand grabbing the slice mid-shot. She’s a growing girl, what can I say?

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