So ... well ... yes, I am well aware that English muffins on their own are not typically a breakfast dish. They are really more a part of that fundamentally English meal, afternoon tea. Unless, that is, they are a part of that classic breakfast dish; Eggs Benedict. Such was my plan.
During the week, Ax tutored me in the secrets of the perfect Hollandaise sauce and I in turn spent hours baking the English muffins. It did certainly seem that I was fully prepared for the breakfast challenge. However, a normal sensible person would not have reached that conclusion. Allow me to explain. On Friday I noticed I was developing a slight sore throat, I thought nothing of it. On Saturday I was irritable, out of sorts, felt generally achy and despite my throat now feeling like I had been gargling broken glass; I failed to put two and two together. Sunday morning I was ill. I knew very well that I was ill. My throat hurt, I had a temperature, I was tired and everything ached. Now the most relevant point of this rather rambling description of my general health is this - every time I get a cold I feel like someone has opened up my head, stirred my brain round with a wooden spoon and then closed it up again. Naturally, this is not conducive to coherent thought processes.
Without me realising, the effects of this had set in on Saturday resulting in me forgetting to buy the ham or even enough eggs to do both the Hollandaise and the poached eggs. By the time I realised this, it was already Sunday morning and I had just finished separating the eggs for the sauce. I felt like a right ejit and got rather annoyed with myself. Ax, being the saint that she is, patiently suggested that we could just have the muffins with some of the jam left over from the croissants. We did, they were lovely, I am still ill. As I have said on my facebook status; "I'm melting .... meeeeelting"
I would like to dedicate this post to Ax - My brilliant flatmate, who has had to cope with me this past week. I am fully aware of how irritable, idiotic and pathetic I am when ill and she's been an absolute trouper.
Now English muffins, as I am sure you know, are a bread based product. I heartily recommend getting yourself a copy of either "Crust; bread to get your teeth into" or "dough" both by Richard Bertinet. Preferably one of the versions which come with the free DVD on how to mix and kneed your basic dough mix. I found it very helpful; if somewhat different from the method I had been taught. I used his method for kneading/mixing the dough for a good 10 minutes, when I then got bored and then finished off by using the more traditional method my mother taught me. It resulted in one of the smoothest and finest dough’s that I have ever made.
Traditional English Muffins
Ingredients
- 400ml (1 1/2 cups) milk
- 14g Unsalted butter
- 1 Extra Large Egg
- 2 tsp dried yeast
- 400g (4 cups) Plain Flour
- 1 tsp salt
- 60ml (1/4 cup) fresh orange juice
Directions
In a pan, very gently heat the milk and butter until the butter melts and stirs into the milk. Were looking for tepid milk here people so when I say gently, I mean gently - you'll see why in a moment. Take off the heat, whisk in the egg until combined and then sprinkle over the yeast to dissolve. This is why we were aiming for tepid milk - too hot and you'll kill the yeast and get some sort of flat bread relation, too cold and the yeast won't ferment and you'll get pretty much the same thing. I like to sprinkle a touch of flour over the yeast mix just so that it’s easier to see when the bubbles start appearing. The yeast will take about 5 minutes to start blowing bubbles in your milk so leave it alone and let it do its thing.
Measure out your flour and salt, and sift them together. Make a little well in the centre. When the yeast mix is foamy, pour it into the well along with the orange juice (in case you were wondering, your muffins will not even hint of orange - this is just to help with the rising process). Loosely mix until the liquid is no longer runny and you have a sticky, glutinous mass. Now turn it out on to the side - leftover flour et al - and begin to knead it, Bertinet-stylee. It will, initially, stick to your fingers making you look like you've contracted some horrible disease - cope. If you add more flour then you'll end up with a very dry muffin, which is never pleasant to eat. As you knead it, the left over flour will gradually mix in, making it less sticky and slowly removing most of the dough that clung to your fingers. I started traditionally kneading when the dough was smoother, about 10 minutes or so in.
I cannot emphasis this next point enough - you need patience when kneading, give the dough all the time it needs. You want a smooth, springy, elastic, lump-free mix that almost has the texture of satin. From tipping mine out of the bowl, to stopping, I believe I was kneading for a good 15 minutes.
Now oil a bowl (I just used the same one I had recently tipped the dough out of) and put your dough into it, covered with Clingfilm. Leave it for about 2 hours in a warmish or room temperature space, allowing it to double in size.
Punch down the dough and very briefly knead it, then roll it into a sausage-like-shape. Using a very sharp knife, divide the dough into 16 equal chunks. Now, between your hands, smoothly shape each chunk into a nice round ball then place onto an oiled tray. Cover with a clean tea towel and leave for yet another two hours, or until the dough has just about doubled in size again.
Now put a small amount of oil into a frying pan and warm on a low to medium heat. Add the muffins to the pan and cook on each side for about 5-7 minutes, or until light brown.
The typical way to eat muffins is to split them and then toast them before eating. After toasting, I spread mine with a touch of butter and a generous helping of some pomegranate jam. We did freeze the majority of them and I discovered this morning that they work very well frozen then toasted to bring them back.
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