Classic English Muffins

It may have been a bad idea to learn how to make Classic English Muffins. You know why? Because they’re so freaking delicious that I’m still craving them a week later. It’s one thing to make a dessert that is fun to eat for a special occasion; it’s another to have the knowledge to create a bread that you typically buy at the grocery store on a regular basis.

This is a recipe one needs to plan ahead for, as it requires 8 to 12 hours in the refrigerator. Overall, the ingredients for this recipe are likely in your kitchen already. I’m continually amazed by the variations of bread or pastry dough that can be made by simple ingredients like milk, butter, flour and sugar. I completed the first half of this recipe the night before, and then finished it when I woke up the next morning.

This was the first time I ever scalded milk (I’m not sure I had ever really heard of this before). It didn’t take long to get the bubbles around the sides while a skin formed, however, it took around 15-20 minutes for the temperature to get near 105° after adding the butter and honey. I got to 113° when I felt the mixture was lukewarm and ready. While I was waiting for the milk to reach the right temp, I combined my dry ingredients in the mixer (it was getting late, I wanted to get these early steps done as soon as possible). I then added some of the milk to the yeast. I used an instant dry yeast packet that I had, which seemed to work fine; it reached the foaminess after five minutes like Claire said it should.

Once I had the milk lukewarm, the foamy yeast and the dry ingredients in the stand mixture, I basically combined it all to form the dough. This was the first time I had ever used my dough hook attachment on my KitchenAid mixer (these are the things bakers get excited about)! This took around nine minutes to form into a dough, scraping the sides down as needed. I then put some vegetable oil in a bowl, added the dough and slid it around, covered it with plastic wrap and let it sit for 90 minutes.

When I returned, the dough had doubled in size like Claire explained. This made me feel relatively good that I was doing everything correctly, as I had never made any type of bread dough before. While the dough had been rising, I placed parchment paper on a baking sheet, brushed it with oil and spread cornmeal all over it. Looking back, I definitely added way too much cornmeal (I was tired, okay?). When the dough was ready, I placed it on the baking sheet, added another parchment paper that was oiled up, and spread the dough out, pushing it around the baking sheet via the parchment paper with my hands. By the end, I had a thin layer of dough in between two pieces of parchment paper, ready to be formed into circles the next morning. I placed it in the fridge and went to bed!

The next day, I simply had to cut out the dough and bake it up for breakfast. I had biscuit cutters and decided to use the largest one I had, but I later realized this did not form the typical sized English muffin. Despite the small size, the process remained the same, and I got way more than the anticipated eight muffins mentioned in Dessert Person.

I was able to cook around seven at a time on my large skillet. The muffins took about five minutes to start puffing, then I rearranged them a bit to even out the heat levels and flipped them. It was really important to watch the muffins from this point on, as some would brown quicker than others. While they were much smaller than English muffins I usually buy at the store, they still had the same look and air bubbles inside (also perhaps a little too much cornmeal on the bottoms, whoops!).

By this point, I had all my English muffins made, and I was hungry! Rather than focus on the last step listed in Dessert Person, I made myself an omelet that I then cut with the same biscuit cutter to match the size of the muffin, and heated up some ham and cheese. I cut into two English muffins, added cream cheese and assembled my delicious breakfast. However, I later realized I should have stabbed the sides of the English muffins with a fork and pulled the tops and bottoms apart to get that…Classic English Muffin appearance (see what I did there). In other words, I should have followed the last step in the book.

Unlike the other desserts I’ve made, this wasn’t a recipe I sliced up, took a bite and decided if I liked it. I tried it as my breakfast sandwich, as I feel that’s what an English Muffin is supposed to do! It’s a supporting factor in the game of breakfast, and it exceeded the average store-bought bread component. The muffins were so airy and fluffy. I actually kind of enjoyed eating two smaller ham-egg-muffin sandwiches than one large one; I was satisfied but not overly full when I was done. I am planning to pull this recipe out again when I have family visit so we can enjoy a nice breakfast together at home—except next time I’ll use less cornmeal and fork the edges for that perfect appearance!

Here is Claire’s YouTube video on Classic English Muffins; we had the same idea to make a breakfast sandwich immediately after baking them!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YaXLdVW7uQ