Homemade English Muffins [Family Connections {for Summer} 2012]

This week in the Family Connections blog hop our theme is Food Connections. I had hoped to share with you how we make pickles from our garden cucumbers… but my back has been out since Monday and our cucumbers are still awaiting pickling. So instead I will share with you how I make English muffins. They’re easier than you’d think and the BEST part is that they’re a perfect summer bread since you don’t need the oven. I tend to take a break from baking our sandwich bread during the summer since it would put our air conditioner and oven in competition with each other. I’ll be sure to post pickles in the coming weeks but for now, here are our English muffins.

If you are afraid of making bread because it involves the use of yeast… Do not be afraid. It is easy. You could do it entirely by hand, but if you want to make a habit out of making your own breads you’ll probably want to make use of a good stand mixer. I use a KitchenAid for just about all of my dough making.

What you’ll need:

• approximately 5 cups of All Purpose flour
• 1/2 cup warm (not hot) water
• 1 Tbsp yeast (I use dry active)
• 1/2 Tbsp sugar
• 2 tsp salt
• 1 cup warm milk
• 1 egg
• 2 Tbsp butter (melted)
• corn meal for dusting
• a griddle or frying pan (I use a griddle)

How you’ll do it:

1. Add the yeast and sugar to the warm water and allow the yeast to bloom for about 5 minutes.
2. Start with around 3 cups of the flour in the mixing bowl and add your salt to it.
3. Lightly beat the egg and add it, the milk, the melted butter, and yeast mixture to the flour in the bowl and mix until well combined.
4. Slowly add additional flour while kneading until you have well formed but very moist dough. It will seem too wet for bread, but it’s perfect. Mine usually requires a total of around 5 cups of flour to form a workable dough.
5. Place the dough into an oiled (I spray with cooking spray) bowl and cover. Allow it to rise for about an hour (or until it has doubled in size).
6. Once it has doubled punch it down to remove the air.
7. Heat your griddle to 300° (stove top to about a medium heat)
8. Take about half of the dough and roll it out on a greased surface (I use cooking spray again). Roll to about 1/3 inch thick. Let it rest a minute or two and then cut with desired size cutter (I use the 4″ cutter from the Pampered Chef set). If you don’t let it rest a bit before cutting the rounds will shrink A LOT.

   

9. Dust the rounds with cornmeal (I don’t dust my rolling surface so that I can re-roll the leftovers after each round of cutting) and place on the griddle. They’ll puff but not spread, so you can place them fairly close.

   

10. Cook for around 5-7 minutes, until nicely puffed and golden brown on the cooking side, then flip and cook the other side until golden.

    

    

11. Place on a cooling rack until completely cooled. They will deflate and assume the look you’re used to, you’ll be able to split them with a fork like store-bought muffins.
12. Toast, spread with butter/jam and enjoy!

I make at least two batches at a time so that I can freeze a bunch. They freeze and defrost very well. The last batch I made I substituted about 1 cup of the flour with corn flour and increased the sugar to 1/3 cup to make corn flavored English muffins (like the new Thomas’ ones).

I hope you’ll give it a try!

This is week seven in the Family Connections {for Summer} blog hop. This week our theme is Food Connections. Join Missional Mama, The Daisyhead, Walking in High Cotton, Our Good Life, and me (CreativLEI) each week by linking up your post relating to family fun or summer activities. Please be sure to add the button (code available in my sidebar) with a link back to this post. Visit the participants for more great ideas for family connections this summer!