Homemade English Muffins

For the 4th edition of my homemade series, I decided to try out a recipe that kept popping up on Pinterest: Homemade English Muffins....I don't know about you, but I love Pinterest; I use it for recipe ideas all the time (if you haven't checked the site out yet, I highly recommend it). I found this recipe for Homemade English Muffins and figured it would fit perfectly with this series.

Ingredients

1 tsp active dry yeast

1 Tbsp sugar

1/2 cup milk

2 Tbsp butter

3 cups flour, divided

3/4 tsp salt

1/4 cup cornmeal

non-stick spray as needed

Directions

1. In a small bowl, combine the yeast, sugar and 1/2 cup warm water. Stir to dissolve the sugar and yeast. Let sit for 5 minutes or until foamy on top.

Yeast and sugar after getting foamy

2. While the yeast/sugar mixture is resting, combine 1 1/2 cups flour and the salt in a large bowl. Stir well to evenly distribute the salt. In a second small bowl, combine the milk and butter. Microwave the milk/butter for for 30 seconds at a time, stirring until the butter melts into the milk.

3. Pour the yeast mixture and the milk mixture into the flour. Stir until it has combined into a pasty mix. Now take the remaining flour (you should have 1 1/2 cups left) and add 1/4 cup at a time. You may not use all of the remaining flour. Stir in 1/4 cup at a tie until the dough forms a soft, slightly sticky ball that pulls away from the bowl. (I probably used about 1 cup of flour here)

4. Sprinkle a little flour onto a clean countertop and coat your hands in flour. Dump the soft ball of dough out of the bowl and knead it for 5 minutes (if you don't know how to knead dough like I didn't, check out this link). Don't be too liberal with the flour in this step; adding too much will result in tough muffins.

5. Shape the dough into a ball and place it in a bowl that has been coated in non-stick spray. Lightly spray the top of the dough and cover with plastic wrap. Let rise until double in size (about 45 min - 1 hour)

The dough covered to let rise

6. Punch the dough down, shape it into another ball, cover the bowl/dough and let rise a second time (45 min - 1 hour or until double in size)

7. Punch down the dough again and turn it out onto a well floured countertop. Using a rolling pin, lightly roll the dough until it is about 3/4 inch thick. Use a round cookie cutter, biscuit cutter, or round drinking glass to cut the dough into circles. When you can't cut out anymore circles, gently ball the remaining dough, roll again, and cut more.

8. Place the cut dough circles onto a sheet pan that has been liberally covered in cornmeal. Sprinkle more cornmeal on top of the muffins. Cover loosely with a damp towel and let rise, once more, until double in size (about another 45 min).

The cut out muffins on a cookie sheet before rising

9. Heat a large skillet over medium-low heat. Spray the pan with non-stick spray. Carefully transfer the fluffy, risen muffins to the hot skillet with a spatula. Cook the muffins in batches in the skillet until they are golden brown and crispy on each side. Make sure to keep the heat low so that the outside browns slowly, allowing time for the inside to bake. It took about 5-7 minutes for each side with mine.

One side is cooked, cooking the other

10. Let the muffins cool on a wire rack before slicing.

Emily's Thoughts

Overall I thought this was a fun recipe to try (who knew you baked English muffins without the oven?!). It's not very hard, but it does take a decent time commitment--not for the physical baking, but for waiting for the dough to rise. If you want to try making something homemade that your normally never would, this is a good recipe to try. And the muffins taste good. 


Credit for this recipe goes to the Budget Bytes blog.