What I learned about making English muffins

I have a very extensive wish list of things I’d like to make one day. However, crossing those off is kind-of like visiting all the places that I hear about or see on tv and think “I’d like to go there some day”. But, when the time is right and the stars align….or, when you have a depressingly rainy bank holiday weekend….something on that wish list starts to look achievable. (This applies to both baking and travel – I know a few people who have managed to escape the cold sogginess that is Britain for warmer Mediterranean lands this weekend.)

English muffins were one of the things on the list. I tried a recipe from Mary Berry’s Baking Bible – she’s one of my baking heroines, and I trust her recipes completely. It looked amazingly simple – just flour, warm milk, yeast, sugar and salt – and the instructions were pretty basic: make dough, cut into shapes, let rise, fry lightly in oil on a griddle. Wait…what was that last one?

No, I didn’t realise that English muffins are cooked on the stovetop rather than in an oven. And yes, that means I never really thought about why the tops and bottoms are always 50 shades darker than the sides. Albeit a long process with cooking each side for seven minutes, the end result wasn’t bad, and here’s what I learned:

1) Temperature control is vital. This is something where the water test to check the initial temperature really helps (flick a few drops on the griddle to see if they sizzle). And, because you’re picking up the griddle in between batches to re-coat it with oil, it’s important to check how each batch is browning before the time is up.

Sprinkle the dough rounds with semolina before rising.
It gets everywhere, but bakes nicely into the top 

when you flip it over....

2) Re-oil the griddle before adding a new batch. You don’t need loads because the muffins will soak it up, but just a bit so they’re not just sitting on a hot surface and burning.

Downside of a gas hob – the heat is concentrated right
in the middle. Checking periodically will avoid getting 

uneven colouring, as shown on the left one.

3) Make sure each side is dark brown. It may even get a little black, but that doesn’t mean it’s burned. The first batch I did was slightly undercooked as I thought they were getting too dark after six minutes, but when I allowed the subsequent muffins to brown up a bit bit more for the full seven minutes that I noticed as they cool down, they just looked like the kind you get in the store. English muffins need to stay on the griddle so long because they’re thick, and they rise as they cook.

4) The uncooked muffins are still rising. There’s not much to do about this, but it just means being strategic about which ones you choose to cook next. Don’t just work from one side of the tray to the other – try to choose muffins that are in between others so the ones left have space to rise, and don’t get stuck to their neighbours. This means they’ll pull a little as you separate them to put them on the griddle, causing them to sink again.

5) There’s no way to make these fresh for breakfast. Unless you really want to go the extra mile and wake up at 4am, you’ll be making these the day before. The cooking process along takes over an hour and a half so I’m not sure when I’ll be making these again, but the taste when they’ve just come off the griddle is definitley an incentive – well worth the wait.

Sun-dried tomato and herb bread

While I don’t have a problem with the breadmaking process – long as it takes – what’s really hard to deal with is getting bread to rise when it’s cold. It’s a cruel truth that in the months when warm bread and carbs, carbs and more carbs are what your body craves as you wrap up warm with blankets and hot water bottles, it’s not always easy to find a warm spot to let bread dough rise.

The warm place I created and fenced off was unfortunately where my two cats like to sit (being a warm place and all…), so I made this bread into pan-shaped loaves rather than fancy rounds or baguettes to give them extra protection from curious paws (they once stepped in a rising foccacia loaf on a baking tray while en route to a windowsill – I blame myself for the lack of foresight, really).

(makes two loaves)

Ingredients:

2 cups (500ml) very warm water

4 cups (545g) bread flour

1 tablespoon sugar

1 package yeast

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 teaspoon salt

1½ teaspoons Italian seasoning (mixed herbs)

½ cup finely-chopped sun-dried tomatoes (sorry, forgot to weigh this one - I used about 10 of varying sizes)

Method:

1. Put the yeast, sugar, 2 cups of the flour and water into a large bowl. Use an electric/handheld mixer to blend it together, scraping the sides to make sure it is mixed thoroughly. Cover with plastic wrap (cling film) and leave for an hour, until mixture is bubbling and has expanded in size.

2. Pour the mixture into a mixing bowl. Using a dough hook if possible, mix in the oil, salt, tomatoes and Italian seasoing (mixed herbs). Add the flour a bit at a time, then turn the dough onto a board and knead for 5-8 minutes or until smooth and springy. Add flour as necessary while kneading.

3. Put the dough into a greased bowl, cover and let rise in a warm place for about an hour, or until the dough has doubled in size.

4. Divide the dough in half. Roll each half into a rectangle, then roll the rectangles tightly, tucking in the ends as you move along. Pinch the edge into the dough to create a smooth, neat seal. Put each dough roll into a loaf pan, cover and let rise in a warm place for about an hour, or until the dough has doubled in size.

5. Preheat the oven to 425F (220C). Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until the crust is golden brown and the bread sounds hollow when tapped.

Last-minute Christmas stollen

In the midst of getting stuck into the thousands of gingerbread cookies, glorious chocolate cheesecake and messy but yummy mince pies (thank you free Mary Berry recipe in this week’s Stylist!) that came out of my kitchen over the past few days, I noticed on Christmas Eve that I had a container of candied ginger that as yet did not have a recipe assigned to it. That was soon remedied, and a version of Christmas stollen was born. I cheated and did the dough in my bread machine, making it by far the easiest recipe of the season. Definitely on the baking list for next year.

Ingredients (makes two 10in loaves):

4½ cups (610g) bread flour

¾ cup (175ml) water

½ cup (130g) butter, softened

1 teaspoon almond extract

1½ teaspoon vanilla extract

2 eggs

½ cup (100g) sugar

1 tablespoon cinnamon

1½ packets of yeast*

1 teaspoon salt

¾ cup (about 200g) candied ginger

¾ cup (about 200g) raisins or sultanas

Lemon glaze:

1 cup (130g) powdered (icing) sugar

⅓ teaspoon lemon extract

1-2 tablespoons milk

Method:

1. Mix and knead the dough by hand as you normally would and allow to rise until nearly double, or add the ingredients into a bread machine pan in the order recommended by the manufacturer and select the dough setting.

2. Punch down and separate into two sections. Roll out each section into an oval, approximately 8-9in diameter. Fold lengthwise and place onto a greased baking tray. Cover and let rise for about an hour, or until you see that it has risen to about 1.5 times its original size.

3. Bake at 350F (180C) for about 40 minutes, or until golden brown. Place on a wire rack to cool.

4. Cover with lemon glaze and powdered (icing) sugar. Top with maraschino (glace) cherries and almond flakes if desired.

*Note: whether due to the freezing temperatures outside, the humidity of the kitchen, random stubborness or all three, the dough just didn’t rise very much. I know stollen is meant to be more dense than your average white loaf, but just to be on the safe side, I’ve added a bit more yeast into the recipe below to compensate – I haven’t tested this though.

Five things I learned about making bread

The tendency to fall into habits applies to more than just what you do with your evenings, the music you listen to and the other little daily occurrences that suddenly become routine. Cooking can become a habitual process too – the same dishes coming into the weekly or monthly dinner rotation, the same cake made for guests and even the same groceries bought week after week.

Last week, I decided to come out of my own cooking habits a little and try something I’ve never really done before – make my own bread. I thought that even if it didn’t work out well on the first few tries, at least the house would smell nice.

But which bread to make? A key staple in human diet for tens of thousands of years, bread has an infinite number of variations that have come in from cultural, historical and experimental factors. I chose five kinds to sample different ways of working with flour, water and yeast. After a week filled with kneading, rising, shaping, timing and – of course – tasting, this is what I came away with…

1. Making bread is not as big a deal as it’s made out to be.

I’m not saying it’s as easy as a Betty Crocker mix, but making a basic white loaf of bread doesn’t really take much more effort than baking a cake, waiting for it to cool and frosting it afterwards.  The time comes in waiting for each stage to rise, but all that means is setting a bowl somewhere and coming back to it in an hour or so.

A basic white bread is easy to make, and tastes amazing!

2. It rounds out even the simplest meal into a special dinner.

Bread is like a meal’s accessory – just like the right shoes or handbag can turn jeans and a T-shirt into a fashion statement, the right bread can complement even something basic like spaghetti and a jar of sauce. Instead of making dinner from scratch, it can definitely be worth it to spend your time on a sun-dried tomato and olive bread to go with it.

This sun-dried tomatoes and black olives goes really well with pasta and a tomato- based sauce.

3. Kneading dough is a good workout.

So perhaps not everyone would devote a week to trying out different kinds of bread, but know this – I certainly felt the effects of spending 10 minutes a day kneading dough by hand. At the very least, it takes the guilt off not going to the gym.

White bread comes in all shapes and sizes – instead of being made in a pan, this "rustic style" loaf did its
last rise on a baking tray, but needed a lot of moisture in the oven to keep the crust from getting too hard.

4. Making bread on a cold day is difficult.

Dough needs a warm place to rise, and there is a particular spot in my house that’s perfect. Or it was, until one cloudy, rainy, miserable day when even The Warm Spot wasn’t living up to its name. As it happens, I was on the fussiest recipe of the five I chose – French bread. It took ages for it to rise, and because French bread dough needs to be refrigerated for a few hours, it was barely done in time for dinner. Props given to the person who invented bread machines.

French bread was my least favourite to make, but it tasted so
wonderful that I can't say I'll never do it again…

5. Don’t leave fresh bread hanging around.

Homemade bread – even when it’s made in a machine – will go stale much more quickly than store-bought. I noticed particularly with the French bread and focaccia that even after a couple of days, they were noticeably drier. The good thing is that bread freezes well, so even if you make more than you need at the time (the recipe makes two loaves and you only need one), you can freeze the extra and bring it out later.

There isn't much that focaccia doesn't go with, and there are lots of different versions to make.
This one was made with rosemary and parmesan cheese, and was pretty quick to do.