English Muffins

I just realized I had this one done and forgot to publish it.

Risen Dough

Believe it or not 4th year of university is very time consuming, hence my lack of posts as of late. School is all done now so I will have a lot more time for cooking. I had high hopes for this week, english muffins were something that I had wanted to make for a long time. Unfortunately, they did not turn out very well.

First a little bit on muffins. Muffin comes from the Old French word mofle which means soft. In England a muffin refers to a yeast risen dough cooked on a griddle while the North American muffin is a quick bread baked in an oven. A quick bread is any batter that is leavened by chemical agents (baking powder or soda). Baking powder is a relatively new invention so our concept of a muffin is much more modern than the English muffin. As I am sure everyone knows English muffins are very versatile as far as toppings and applications. They can be made into sandwiches for breakfast or otherwise, the childhood favourite English muffin pizzas or just eaten with butter.

Mangled Can for Mold

Alton Brown said the key to making these muffins correctly was heat management and boy was he right! The dough is fairly standard besides the addition of powdered milk. The recipe calls for a greater powder to water ratio then the manufacturer recommands, this way the muffins can have more of the milks proteins and sugars without additional liquid. I will be honest I did not buy powdered milk because I could only find huge bags and what else am I going to do with it? The recipe says to cook on an electric griddle that has a thermostat to control the temperature. I don't have one of these so I thought I could pull it off on a standard pan... nope. I burned the tops and bottoms without cooking the middle at all. Another failure for me was using a can as a cooking mold. Tuna cans can be used while the muffin is cooking so they keep the round shape. The problem was that the tuna cans have bottoms that are not supposed to be opened. One broken can opener later I managed to get the bottom off the can but it sure wasn't pretty.

Burned on the outside, raw in the middle

I would like to give this another shot sometime when I actually had the right tools for the job. The muffins did not go to waste though, they became a bread pudding.

Verdict: give it another try.

Recipe: English Muffins