English Muffins are Making My Family HAPPY.

Here is my updated cooking method (and a bit more detail) about my homemade English Muffins (and again, a Thank You to Carol McGee for the inspiration).

I put my dry ingredients in a gallon sized twist tie bag.  I can make 10 of these in 10 minutes plus a short amount of clean-up time (and remember, I get my King Arthur flour from Johnson's Egg Farm for $20 for 50 pounds -- cheapest price anywhere).  Look for a restaurant supplier near you.  Now, my dry ingredients that go in the bag are the exact same as the dry ingredients for my pizza crust which makes this extra handy.  The only addition is 1/8 tsp of baking powder which I add to the dry mix when I am making English muffins. 

Dry Mix -- write this in sharpie right onto your bread machine
2 pounds flour (I weigh this on a kitchen scale).
1 Tablespoon Sugar (I use brown sugar because this is what I need for pizza crust)
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 Tablespoons yeast.

Put the dry ingredients in the bread machine pan (you may have to adjust to use less flour).
Add the following (and write this on your bread machine, too):
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup milk
1/2 cup water

I measure the milk into a large measuring cup and then top up to 2 1/2 cups water.  This gives me 1 cup of milk and 1 1/2 cups water but I don't like how wide the top of the measuring cups are these days.  I think the large cups are not accurate because of the surface tension -- so I prefer to measure all my liquid in one go if possible.

So, by now, I have about 2 or 3 minutes into the dough at this point.  I pour the liquid in slowly so my bread machine can handle the super-sized dough ball. 

After 20 minutes, my bread machine starts a rise cycle.  Normally I take my dough out before the rise and put it in the empty dry-ingredients bag.  I twist tie it and put it in the fridge until I'm ready to use it.  This eliminates the next 70 minutes of not being able to forget the dough.  I can forget it in the fridge. 

When I'm ready to make the dough (it should have at least for hours to rise in the fridge as it rises much more slowly), I remove the dough and let it warm a bit. 

Now for my new cooking trick.  I take one of my large, heavy baking trays, flip it upside down and sprinkle with cornmeal from four star farms in Northfield.  I then roll golf ball sized lumps into balls and place 12 on the baking tray.  Then I flip each ball of dough so it has some cornmeal on both sides.  Now, for the final trick, I place another large, heavy baking tray on top of all the English Muffins.

Put them in a preheated 400 degree oven for about 15 minutes.  Everyone in my family is loving these and they are now the favored after-school snack.  They taste good the following day (not all fresh breads are good the next day) and make a very quick meal as bruschetta (we used to call them E.M. pizzas but isn't this so much more fun?) for lunch or dinner and of course are great for breakfast. 

Have fun and try something new!