English Muffins

I've always been a fan of english muffins. With all the wonderful nooks and crannies, they are the best vessels for butter out there. Now that I have gotten more into baking bread and understanding what is going on, I have wondered more and more how these delightful little fellows get all those butter holders, so I decided to try making some.

The dough is a heavily enriched one, made entirely with milk and a little shortening instead of water. I used 2% because it's what we had on hand. The dough came together easily, and was lovely to knead. The higher fat content really kept it tender and easy to work with -- barely requiring any extra flour to keep it from sticking to my hands. This bread is done without a starter, so it's just a mix, knead, and two risings and you're ready to go.

For the second rise, the dough is divided and formed into small boules. Once they have risen (which mine did nicely) they are then cooked for 5 minutes per side on a hot skillet. At this point, they are supposed to swell up and out, widening and flattening a little. You'll note the use of the phrase "supposed to" up there. Mine cooked to a lovely golden brown on the first side, but never quite managed to swell. This is odd, because I usually do get a nice oven pop when I make bread. I suspect that I had too dry a dough, and will probably try using more liquid (and maybe higher fat content) the next time I attempt this. Once cooked on both sides, the muffins go into the oven to finish cooking the centers.

The final results were ok, but not stellar. As I suspected would happen when they failed to swell, the muffins did not have any nooks and crannies to speak of. The texture was more like that of a rustic white bread. Without the crannies to justify an artery clogging amount of butter, the flavor was just ok as well. Without a pre-ferment, this lacked the sharpness that I prefer in breads.

I do think that I'll try this again, with a few notable changes:

1. Hydrate the dough for longer and with more liquid.
   
2. Aim for a (slightly) higher fat content in the final dough.
   
3. See if I can work in a pre-ferment, perhaps using water in that and then cream once I form the final dough.
   
4. Clean my stove and tea kettle before posting pictures of them on the internet.