English Muffins with Nooks and Crannies with the Bread Baking Babes

The Bread Baking Babes have been baking close to ten years now, so it has gotten tricky to find breads that we haven't baked. This month I'm Kitchen of the Month, so finding a good recipe was a necessity. 

I was surprised to look at the list and not see English Muffins. I'm quite fond of English Muffins, but I grew up with Thomas's version and they always have 'nooks and crannies', the irregular air bubbles inside that, when split, make great places for the butter to collect after the muffin halves are toasted. My earlier attempts at making my own English Muffins were not successful in that department. The texture was like regular bread...no nooks and crannies to speak of, hence unacceptable.

Recently I discovered a recipe that seemed like it would solve that problem. It was found on the Serious Eats site and the blogger is Stella Parks. She combines bread flour and whole wheat flour, uses instant dry yeast (not rapid-rise), doesn't knead the dough, and lets the dough rise slowly, then puts dough blobs onto a bed of corn meal, sprinkles more on top, and lets that sit in the fridge at least 12 hours. Who knew that these steps would lead to excellent English Muffins?

After trying the recipe as written, I also tried to make a sourdough version with my sourdough starter. With a few variations of the recipe, that worked, too. The original version has a distinct honey flavor and you can taste the whole wheat. The sourdough version allows the sour flavor to shine so the honey and wheat are muted flavors. Both are delicious and worth your time. There are plenty of nooks and crannies!

To become a Buddy, and I hope you do, just bake these (well, actually you griddle them) and email me a photo and a short description of your experience making them, plus a link to your post if you posted about them. I'll send you a Buddy badge for your post at the end of the month. You have until November 29th to email me. My email is elle dot lachman at gmail dot com. I'll do a round-up post in early December and put something up on our Bread Baking Babes Facebook page, too. Come bake with us!

Be sure to visit the other Bread Baking Babes sites and see what they have done with this recipe. There are sure to be variations!

BlogFrom OUR Kitchen - Elizabeth

A Messy Kitchen - Kelly

Judy's Gross Eats - Judy

Karen's Kitchen Stories - Karen

Notitie Van Lien - Lien

My Diverse Kitchen - Aparna

BreadExperience - Cathy

Thymefor Cooking - Katie

MyKitchen in Half Cups - Tanna

Bake My Day - Karen

English Muffins - from Serious Eats, Stella Parks,

Makes about twelve 3 1/2-inch muffins
ACTIVE TIME:20 minutes - TOTAL TIME:16 to 30 hours

Ingredients

·         10 ounces bread flour (2 cups; 285g)

·         5 ounces whole wheat flour (1 cup; 140g) (makes a more tender interior)

·         2 3/4 teaspoons (11g) kosher salt; for table salt, use the same weight or half as  much by volume

·         1 1/4 teaspoons (4g) instant dry yeast (not rapid-rise)

·         12 ounces cold milk (1 1/2 cups; 340g), any percentage will do (helps create nooks and crannies)

·         3 1/2 ounces honey (1/4 cup; 100g)

·         1 large egg white, cold

·         5 ounces fine cornmeal (1 cup; 145g)(I used twice as much and put muffins on two sheet pans with space around them - Elle), and more for dusting - don't skip this

·         Roughly 1 ounce bacon fat, unsalted butter, non-dairy margarine, or oil (2 tablespoons; 30g), for griddling

Directions
1. Make the Dough and Let Rise: In a large bowl, mix bread flour, whole wheat flour, kosher salt, and yeast together until well combined. Add milk, honey, and egg white, stirring with a flexible spatula until smooth, about 5 minutes. Cover with plastic and set aside until spongy, light, and more than doubled, 4 to 5 hours at 70°F. (The timing is flexible depending on your schedule.)

2. For the Second Rise: Thickly cover a rimmed aluminum baking sheet with an even layer of cornmeal. With a large spoon, dollop out twelve 2 2/3-ounce (75g) portions of dough; it's perfectly fine to do this by eye. If you'd like, pinch the irregular blobs here and there to tidy their shape. Sprinkle with additional cornmeal, cover with plastic, and refrigerate at least 12 and up to 42 hours.

3. To Griddle and Serve: Preheat an electric griddle to 325°F or warm a 12-inch cast iron skillet or griddle over medium-low heat. When sizzling-hot, add half the butter and melt; griddle muffins until their bottoms are golden brown, about 8 minutes. Flip with a square-end spatula and griddle as before. Transfer to a wire rack until cool enough to handle, then split the muffins by working your thumbs around the edges to pull them open a little at a time. Toast before serving and store leftovers in an airtight container up to 1 week at room temperature (or 1 month in the fridge).

Sourdough Version:
Ingredients
1 cup active starter fed with a mixture of 1 cup flour and 1 cup water...and allow it to sit at least 1 hour to activate the yeast. Add to flour mixture when you add liquid.

Same amount of whole wheat flour and salt as original recipe

1 teaspoon dry yeast, not larger amount of original recipe

1/2 cup milk, slightly warm, not larger amount of original recipe - I mixed the barely warm milk, the honey, and the egg white together before adding to the starter mixture, stirred, then added the flour.

The rest of the recipe is just the same, including the rest of the ingredients (honey, egg white, cornmeal, butter) and the directions.

No Knead Sort of Irish Bread

Every once in a while I return to the No-Knead kind of bread because it is easy and you get a very artisan looking loaf with not much trouble. This time I used a good amount of the King Arthur Flour Irish Wholemeal Flour to make the bread, plus some nice sourdough starter, so it isn't an authentic Irish bread, but surely similar to some that might have been made on that green, green island.

It makes wonderful sandwiches and toast and French toast and can be eaten with pleasure, while still a little bit warm from the oven, without any butter, jam, topping of any sort and as just the simple, unadorned, unprocessed slice to enjoy.

I sort of poured the dough after the first rise onto a heavily floured sheet of parchment, then used that to flip half of the loaf over the other half, then it all went into the preheated Dutch oven which I had sprayed lightly with oil. I put the lid on for the first half of the baking and then removed it so that the top crust crisped up an became a lovely golden brown. It didn't fill the whole pot, but that was OK.

Oh, yes, below the recipe is a photo of the two little black lambs born in our field this morning. Sooo cute! Kinda hard to see them, but we were keeping well away until they bonded with their ewe. No interest in bummer lambs.

No-Knead Bread in a Pot Elle's Way
makes 1 large loaf

1 cup sourdough starter
1 cup Irish Wholemeal flour
1 1/2 cups water
2 -3 cups bread flour
1 1/2 teaspoon sea salt

Put the sourdough starter in a large bowl. In another bowl whisk together the wholemeal flour and the water. Add it to the starter and whisk to blend. Let bowl sit, uncovered, on the counter for at least 1 hour...it's OK for it to sit longer (another hour or two is OK) for a stronger sourdough flavor.

Stir the bread flour into the starter mixture 1/4 cup at a time with a wooden spoon, stirring until all the flour is mixed in before adding any more. You should have a shaggy dough that doesn't hold a shape. When you have added 2 cups of flour, sprinkle in the sea salt, then another 1/4 cup of the flour and finish stirring it in. You will have a very slack dough. You can stop here or add more flour, 1/4 cup at a time but the less flour the more holes.

Let the mixture sit, uncovered, on the counter for 1 1/2 to 4 hours. Mixture will be bubbly.

Place a large piece of parchment paper on the counter and flour it heavily. Place/pour the sourdough mixture over the flour. Using a bench scraper, lift up the dough all around the edges and sprinkle heavily with flour under the edges, then let dough fall on top of the flour. When you have gone all around the dough mass, use the bench scraper to flip half of the dough on top of the other half. Sprinkle top heavily with flour and let sit until pot is ready.

Place heavy cast iron pot or Dutch oven, with lid, in the oven and preheat for 20 minutes to 450 degrees F. When 20 minutes have passed, remove pot and lid from the oven and slide the dough into the pot, discarding the parchment paper. Cover with the lid (remember to use oven mitts for all of this...the pot is very hot!) and return the covered pot to the oven.

Bake for 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 -25 minutes or until loaf is dark golden brown and sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom. Let cool, outside of the pot, for 10 minutes on a rack. Serve warm or cool before eating.

Bread in a Pot

Although I've know about the No-Knead bread baked in a large pot for a while, I never tried it.

Looking for a change of pace, I finally tried it. At the end of last week, before we left for our anniversary trip, I took the sourdough starter 'toss-off' and made some really slack dough. I didn't use the stand mixer, just stirred the usual flour and water mixture in with a wooden spoon. Once that had sat for an hour or so and was bubbly, I stirred in bread flour, 1/4 cup at a time, until it was almost the density I was looking for. Next I added a teaspoon and a half of sea salt and the last 1/4 cup bread flour. This was basic, basic bread...wild yeast, all-purpose and unbleached bread flours, salt and water.

The instructions for getting the dough ready for the pot included making it into a ball. Well, like that Garlic Bread, this dough was too soft and runny to create a ball. What I did instead was to heavily flour a piece of parchment paper, dump the dough onto it, lift the edges with my bench scraper and put more flour underneath as I did, then eventually I flipped half the dough over on top of the other half and sprinkled the top heavily with flour.

The recommendations for baking bread in the pot are to put the pot into the oven and let it heat along with the oven until both are very hot...about 20 minutes. Then you take the pot out of the oven, slide in the dough, cover it up and put it back into the oven. Since (mostly) the dough was on flour, it slid off the parchment and into the preheated pot and only needed a little adjustment once in the pot.

By baking it this way you are creating a small oven inside of the larger oven. It captures the moisture from the dough as it bakes. The loaf rose in the center and got really beautifully crusty top and bottom. I took the cover off for the last 10 minutes and that may have helped give it a crisp crust.

We loved this bread with its chewy texture and lots of holes. Great crust combined with a moist crumb and tangy sourdough taste is easy to like. It makes wonderful toast, too.

No-Knead Bread in a Pot Elle's Way
makes 1 large loaf

1 cup sourdough starter
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups water
2 -3 cups bread flour
1 1/2 teaspoon sea salt

Put the sourdough starter in a large bowl. In another bowl whisk together the all-purpose flour and the water. Add it to the starter and whisk to blend. Let bowl sit, uncovered, on the counter for at least 1 hour...it's OK for it to sit longer (another hour or two is OK) for a stronger sourdough flavor.

Stir the bread flour into the starter mixture 1/4 cup at a time with a wooden spoon, stirring until all the flour is mixed in before adding any more. You should have a shaggy dough that doesn't hold a shape. When you have added 2 cups of flour, sprinkle in the sea salt, then another 1/4 cup of the flour and finish stirring it in. You will have a very slack dough. You can stop here or add more flour, 1/4 cup at a time but the less flour the more holes.

Let the mixture sit, uncovered, on the counter for 1 1/2 to 4 hours. Mixture will be bubbly.

Place a large piece of parchment paper on the counter and flour it heavily. Place/pour the sourdough mixture over the flour. Using a bench scraper, lift up the dough all around the edges and sprinkle heavily with flour under the edges, then let dough fall on top of the flour. When you have gone all around the dough mass, use the bench scraper to flip half of the dough on top of the other half. Sprinkle top heavily with flour and let sit until pot is ready.

Place heavy cast iron pot or Dutch oven, with lid, in the oven and preheat for 20 minutes to 450 degrees F. When 20 minutes have passed, remove pot and lid from the oven and slide the dough into the pot, discarding the parchment paper. Cover with the lid (remember to use oven mitts for all of this...the pot is very hot!) and return the covered pot to the oven.

Bake for 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 -25 minutes or until loaf is dark golden brown and sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom. Let cool, outside of the pot, for 10 minutes on a rack. Serve warm or cool before eating.

NOTE: The New York Times recipe that started the No-Knead craze had the dough ferment much longer, but I was in a hurry and this seemed to work just fine.

Just in case you want to see some travel photos, here we have Sweetie and Xam at a Monterey beach. The Bread Baker's Dog loves to travel and is a good traveler.

This was an especially important trip because we just found out that Xam has an inoperable breathing disorder...it just wore out...he is the equivalent of a 95 year old man so the old guy is getting tuckered out. Unlikely that we will have any more trips with him, but this one was lovely even if the weather was rainy and/or cloudy almost the whole time until we crossed the Golden Gate bridge heading home.

xx