English Muffins

Hey! Guess what?!

I'm still making my own bread and now that the muffin molds have come in the mail, it's time to make English muffins.

I've gone through a lot of the recipes in the book and have made rye bread, semolina, brioche (with chocolate ganache and into cinnamon buns), etcetera, etcetera, and now I've made buttermilk bread! I noticed the openness of the texture on the buttermilk bread and decided it would probably be perfect for muffins, so now I'm giving it a whirl.

They're still rising as I type. I'll let you know how they turn out.

Feeling sad sucks, but at least I have fresh bread every damn day! Yarrrr!

So, turns out they need more like an hour to rise when starting with refrigerated dough, at this elevation, in order to reach the top of the ring. I also increase the baking temperature by 25 degrees (and only use 1 tbsp yeast in the main batch), so these were baked at 375, for about 30 minutes, instead of 20.

However, they are lovely when done. Next time I think I'll use semolina flour on the bottoms instead of the cornmeal I have. It's a whole grain cornmeal and possibly too crunchy! They did dome up, but I'm not a purist, so I love them anyway. After reading some of the comments on the AB5M website, I found I could probably put a cookie sheet over top of them while they cook to get both sides flat. Maybe next time.

The interior crumb is lovely, too.

Oh and did I mention that they're yummy?

Sorry, I couldn't resist taking a bite before photographing it!

I think we may be done buying bread at the store, so long as I have room in my fridge for my two bread proofing boxes. Which I do. I keep two different types of dough going, just to try all of the different recipes. It's been really fun, too. One may have brioche, while the other is buttermilk. Or whole wheat and peasant bread. The babies are loving it, as are Caitlin and Eric and whomever may drop in for dinner.

I've found that vital wheat gluten makes a huge difference in breads that have whole grains in them, so I do throw a tablespoon of that in per cup of whole grain flours. It makes a big difference at this elevation. After I've made at least one batch of each different type of recipe, I'll probably go back and start really messing around with ingredients, just to see if I can make the "perfect" (for us) loaf of sandwich bread. I like something with whole wheat in it, so it's not all white flour we're eating and Caitlin likes something with a softer crust. Eric is happy eating anything but the 100% whole wheat recipe.

Onwards!