Bread Baking Babes bake breakfast

I made other recipes of these several times before; the English Muffins that our dear Kitchen of the month Babe Elle Baker ("Feeding my enthusiasms") picked for us. This time they're sort of no-knead, which is easy. And the dough is made the day before baking, so they are ready to bake (on the stove) for breakfast without preparing anything. 

I was to lazy to make eggs florentine (with spinach), eggs royale (with smoked salmon) or eggs benedict (with bacon, which I don't eat) but just put a slice of baked pastrami and a stirred fried egg on my muffin and that was a wonderful breakfast. It is a treat to have fresh baked bread like that in the morning. But do not be mistaken, they're great for lunch too!

The original recipe called for 100 g honey, I reduced that to 40 grams so there was not a sweet taste to the bread, for me that worked better when combined with eggs. I didn't make any other changes to the recipe. With these sort of rolls you always need a lot of cornmeal or rice flour to keep them from sticking, especially because they rested overnight, I always find it a shame that I have to throw that out after using it. The chickens didn't want it. That was the only thing that is not good about these.

So wanna treat your family or yourself to a luxureus breakfast with these delicious English muffins.... go and bake some too. Become our Bread Baking Buddy, Tell us how it went, post, make a picture of it ad send all of this to Elle (look for her email at her blog; deadline 29th of this month. Happy baking!

English Muffins

Makes 8-12 muffins

(PRINT recipe)

285 g bread flour

140 g whole wheat flour

10 g fine salt

4 g instant dry yeast

340 g cold milk

40 g honey

1 large egg white, cold

145 g fine cornmeal, for dusting

30 g butter, for griddling

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 21°C. (The timing is flexible depending on your schedule.)

For the second rise: Thickly cover a rimmed aluminum baking sheet with an even layer of cornmeal. With a large spoon, dollop out twelve (or less) 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. I ended up making just 9 muffins, more didn’t fit on my sheet. Sprinkle with additional cornmeal, cover with plastic, and refrigerate at least 12 and up to 42 hours. MIne came out quite flat, don't be alarmed, this will fix itself when baked.

To griddle and serve: Preheat an electric griddle to 160°C or warm a (cast iron) skillet or griddle over medium-low heat. I used a frying pan. When 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).

(source: Serious Eats, Stella Parks,http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2016/04/no-knead-english-muffins-recipe.html)