Homemade English Muffins

For a little over a decade now, I've eaten basically the same thing for breakfast every morning: black tea, Greek yogurt, and two English muffins, toasted and with butter.  What can I say, I'm a creature of habit!  

The Greek yogurt at least comes in a container that's readily recyclable, and I've finally found a company, Arbor Teas (not an affiliate link, though if they're reading this and want to give us money...) that offers loose-leaf tea in fully backyard-compostable packaging--yay!  

The best muffins I've made.

I'm not aware, though, of any company that sells English muffins without a plastic bag and cardboard that's almost certainly coated with something (plastic, wax) that's not really recyclable or compostable.  So, inspired by one of Nate's friends who tried making her own English muffins at home, I embarked on a journey to, first, find the perfect recipe and, second, perfect my ability to follow it.

After trying several recipes, the one from America's Test Kitchen was the winner.  (I think I found it in their Cook It in Cast Iron cookbook at the library, but I'm honestly not positive.)  It offered the best chance for actual nooks and crannies (the other recipes I tried gave me a more textured bread, but not quite nooks and crannies), and it avoided the beeriness that I found in some other recipes that called for longer rising times.

I've modified the recipe to accommodate some whole wheat flour, adding a little extra water to make up for the denser wheat flour.  I'll substitute a whole cup of white whole wheat flour or half a cup of regular whole wheat flour for an equivalent amount of bread flour.  This gives a nuttier taste and offers a (slightly) healthier final product.  

I also use cream instead of whole milk--this consistently gives me English muffins that stay moist for longer, an essential quality for homemade bread, which tends to dry out quickly.  (What do they add to store-bought bread that prevents this from happening?  It can't be good, whatever it is.)  Whether or not you use any wheat flour, I strongly suggest substituting cream (heavy or light, half and half would probably do) for the milk.  Don't even think about using skim milk or low-fat.  It just won't be good, and since these take four hours, it's worth it to use the right ingredients for the job.  Cream is essential, and it keeps practically forever in the fridge.  (Now if only I could find a readily available brand of cream that comes in a recyclable package instead of those horrific, unrecyclable cartons.  It's the one ingredient I add with totally irredeemable packaging.)

The rising is where things get the most tricky, and this is where I'm still working on my technique.  Let them rise too long, and they'll fall in and deflate, resulting in fewer nooks and crannies, though they'll still be tasty and fine for toast, which is the only right way to eat English muffins, after all.  Don't let them rise enough, and they'll also not have the nooks and crannies so key to English muffins, though, again, they'll be serviceable.  I've taken to preheating the oven to the lowest setting (170 degrees F in our case), then shutting it off, letting some heat escape, and placing the dough inside to rise.  I think the second rise is more essential to good texture: you've got to stop before they start to deflate.  Check after 45 minutes for sure.  But I haven't yet made anything inedible, and with each bake, I'm improving my intuitive sense of when the dough looks ready to cook.  The two photos below show what happens when I let the dough rise too long (overproofing, in baking parlance).

overproofed dough = flatter texture

Normally, they should be far puffier, like rolls.

Ultimately, the homemade English muffins have a bunch of benefits that store-bought just can't offer.
1) They taste better than store-bought, even if they don't always have quite the same nooks and crannies.
2) I'm avoiding the waste from the English muffin packaging.
3) I'm saving a bunch of money.  (I'm something of an English muffin snob, and the name-brand I liked, in its whole wheat variety, was running me about $8 per week, which ends up totaling to over $400 per year on English muffins.  I haven't yet done the math, but I'm pretty sure the ingredients I use cost less than $8 per week.)
4) I know exactly what goes into my English muffins, and it doesn't include any preservatives or weird chemicals.  (While I've never been super concerned about additives, listening to this book made me more aware of considering the potential effects of what I put into my body.  Plus, it was a great book.  You can check out my book blog if you want to know more about what I'm reading.)

English muffins are just one of many items that I'd never considered cooking for myself until I met Nate, who is more daring in the kitchen than I am.  We'll be posting lots more about our various home-cooked recipes in the future, and I hope some of you might be inspired to try cooking something that you didn't know you could make at home.  Reduce packaging, save money, and have a tastier product: not perfect, but definitely better!

The baked English muffins should be puffy.

Look at the nooks!