Whole Wheat English Muffins
Who loves english muffins?!
I definitely do. We usually had a rectangular package of store bought english muffins in our bread box growing up. My favorite ways to eat english muffins are:
Toasted with homemade raspberry jam and butter
As a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich
Might sound weird - as a hamburger bun
Quite a few years ago, my mom took me to a restaurant in Laguna Beach and I ordered the hamburger, which came on an english muffin. It was so so good and I never would have thought to do that in a million years. But last night I had a hamburger on one of my english muffins, highly recommend.
English muffin dough is relatively simple to put together. The tricky part is in the baking. I have tried two methods for baking the muffins:
Stovetop nestled in cornmeal in a warm cast iron skillet then into a 250 degree oven for 15 minutes
Just in the oven on my pizza stone at 325 degrees
I believe the pizza stone in the oven makes a more uniformly baked english muffin. But the cast iron lends nice color to the crust of the muffin. Try both, see what you think.
Here is the recipe, adapted from Christina Tosi’s recipe on Food52.
English Muffins
2 tablespoons + 1 teaspoon active dry yeast
1/4 cup white sugar
1/4 cup lukewarm water
1 3/4 cup buttermilk
2 1/2 cups unbleached all purpose flour
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 1/2 tablespoon sea salt
5 tablespoons butter, room temperature, cut into chunks
cornmeal
Instructions:
In bowl of stand mixer, combine yeast, sugar, and water. Let sit for five minutes to allow the yeast to activate.
Add buttermilk and stir. Add flours and salt and begin to mix for 5 minutes using the dough hook attachment. Dough will be loose and wet.
Slowly begin to add chunks of butter to the dough. You want to spread this out over 7 minutes to allow the butter to work its way into the dough. The dough will still be loose at this point but will hold together.
Grease a large bowl and place dough in bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise at room temperature for 1 hour. After 1 hour, place in the fridge for half an hour.
Take a large rimmed cookie sheet and sprinkle cornmeal over the bottom.
Remove dough from fridge and cut dough into 16 pieces. Roll each piece into a small flat circle. Place in cookie sheet, leaving 1 inch gaps between each muffin. Put back in the fridge.
At this point you can let the dough rest and rise for two hours and then bake, or leave them in the fridge for a few days. The longer they are in the fridge the more sour and delicious they become.
When ready to bake, remove from refrigerator.
Preheat oven to 250 degrees.
Warm a cast iron skillet on low heat for 5 minutes. Place english muffins gently in cast iron. Let cook on each side for about 10 minutes. I know it’s a long time but the slow cooking is what makes these so good. After 20 minutes, place in preheated oven and cook for another 15 minutes.
