This week its time for a favourite, English muffins. I like these much better than crumpets especially with some poached eggs and hollandaise sauce, but I have never made them. Bread is not one of my regular bakes, unlike my mum who makes it at least twice a week and has done since I was a child.
So hear with all my ingredients it was time to get messy. Messy was an understatement and so was the recipe’s statement that once everything was mixed together it should form a soft dough. It was so soft and wet it almost fell through my fingers
Oh my dough…
The do was so wet I wasn’t too sure how to knead it. I ended up just pushing, pulling and swirling it around the workspace in the vain hope that I was doing the right thing. After about 5 minutes it’s was still so wet and stuck to my web my fingers so much that I couldn’t even even see my fingers! Seeing no end to this gunky mess I decided to add some more flour the hope that that would firm and dry things out a bit
Getting better….but more flour…done
After a period of time, a lot longer than the 10 minutes stated in the recipe, it eventually resembled a dough that was smooth and stretchy, and I felt it was ok to stop and put it back in the bowl to rise.
Now dough rising in my house has always been somewhat varied. I have tried various methods, putting it the airing cupboard, by a window and on top of a radiator. But all of these produced slow if not no results. The only methods that seems to work for me is sticking the bowl with the dough on a bench/chair in front of a hot oven (with the door closed) the other one is turning the oven on the lowest heat while making the dough and turning it off when you have finished kneading, then placing the bowl in the oven, with the door slightly ajar. You have to be careful with this last method as you don’t want the oven too hot, as it will cause the dough to over proof and potentially form a crust, a definite no no. Oh the dream of having a proving drawer like they do on GBBO!
Roll, cut and rise.
After about 1.5 hours of proving, it has risen but maybe not completely doubled in size. I tipped it out on to the polenta and flour dusted surface and started to roll it out. To be honest there really didn’t seem like there was going to be enough dough to be able to get 8 muffins out of it, so I rolled it a little thinner than the 2.5cm stated in the recipe. I think if i had had more success with the proving I would have had to do this. It get exactly 8 muffins cut, it is important to use the 8cm ring, and use the straight edge. I reckon it you used the fluted edge you’d a) not have a traditional English muffin and b) they probably wouldn’t rise as well on the second proof and cooking, similar to scones.
The remaining polenta was used for dusting the baking sheets and the top of the cut muffins, which then needed to be left for the second proving. This time I used the bench in front of the oven technique!
No baking griddle so it’s the heavy based frying pan for me
Even thought they had risen a bit more with the second proove, I was hoping that they would improve on cooking, as bread does. So on a super low heat I put four in the pan and hope for the best.
Woohoo they did rise! What was once semi airy dough discs was now turning into little puffed up rounds of yummy dough.As in the recipe I stuck to the 5-6 rule on each side, making sure not the touch them much int he process so that they would get the light brown colouring that you see on the traditional shop versions.
As I mentioned previously I think that they would have risen more if the first prove didn’t take so long and the rolled out dough was more thicker, closer to 2.5cm. But for a first attempt I’m pretty pleased with how they turned out
Leftover lemon curd, butter and some little animals!
I had 8 nicely coloured and hot muffins, ready to be served wight the left over Lemon curd from last week, YUM! Needless to say, they didn’t last long, even without the aid of a poached egg and hollandaise.
One last note, don’t forget the leftover dough, after you have cut out your 8. They make for great testers for the cooking times, plus they can end up looking like an odd giraffe shaped muffin!