Home › Bread and Bread Making › Raised Muffins
Raised Muffins
1 cup scalded milk 1 cup boiling water 2 tablespoons butter 1/4 cup sugar 3/4 teaspoon salt 1/4 yeast cake 1 egg 4 cups flour Add butter, sugar, and salt to milk and water; when lukewarm, add yeast cake, and when dissolved, egg well beaten, and flour; beat thoroughly, cover, and let rise over night. In morning, fill buttered muffin rings two-thirds full; let rise until rings are full, and bake thirty minutes in hot oven.
This is a soft overnight batter, closer to a thick pancake batter than a kneaded dough, raised with a very small amount of yeast and baked in rings. The whole method hinges on that deliberately tiny quantity of yeast working slowly for eight to twelve hours.
- The yeast quantity is intentionalA compressed fresh yeast cake was a small block (sizes varied by maker; the familiar 0.6 oz cake is a later standard), so a quarter cake amounts to only about half a teaspoon of modern active dry or instant yeast. Using a full modern packet risks exhausting the batter long before morning and giving a sour, slack result.
- Scalded milkScalding is generally explained as deactivating substances in raw milk that weaken gluten; with pasteurized milk it is unnecessary and you can simply warm the milk. The recipe has you wait for the milk-and-water mixture to cool: check that it is under about 110F before the yeast goes in.
- Hot ovenRead this as 400 to 425F. Thirty minutes at that heat suits deep rings; shallower molds will be done in 20 to 25 minutes, when the tops are well browned and the centers read about 200F.
- Muffin ringsThese were plain metal hoops set on a greased griddle or baking sheet, which is why the batter can be poured rather than shaped. A standard muffin tin works, buttered generously and filled two-thirds full; the sides will be softer and paler than a ring-baked muffin.
- Overnight rise temperatureThe original gives no temperature, and an unheated nineteenth-century kitchen would have been cool, which suits so small a quantity of yeast. In a warm modern kitchen the batter may over-rise and thin out; for a full twelve hours the refrigerator is safer, with an hour at room temperature before filling the rings.
- ConsistencyFour cups of flour to two cups of liquid gives a batter you beat rather than knead. Beat it hard at mixing to develop some gluten, then leave it alone; stirring it down in the morning will cost you the lift.
- YieldAbout 12 to 15 muffins in standard cups, or a dozen in 3-inch rings.
Raised muffins belong to the older English tradition in which a muffin is a yeast-leavened batter cake, cooked in rings on a griddle or, as here, in the oven; the chemically leavened cupcake-shaped American muffin was the newer arrival and eventually took over the name. Books of this era often print both kinds close together, and the yeast versions are typically the ones begun the night before. The very small measure of yeast, a quarter of a cake, reflects both the strength of fresh compressed yeast and the long, slow fermentation suited to a cool kitchen.