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Hotel Wheat Muffins
2 1/2 pounds of light bread dough. 4 ounces of butter, melted. 1/2 cupful of milk or cream. 5 yolks and 1 whole egg. 2 teaspoonfuls of sugar. 4 ounces of flour. Little salt.
Take the dough from the breakfast bread at 5 in the morning. If French roll dough no sugar need be added. Work the butter and milk in, and set in a warm place a few minutes. Then beat in the eggs and flour and keep beating against the side of the pan till the batter is very elastic and smooth Rise awhile. The tin muffin rings should be two inches across and one inch deep. Set them on a buttered baking pan, half fill with the batter-which should be thin enough to settle smooth, and thick enough not to run-let rise half an hour, bake about ten minutes in a hot oven. Bake small lots at intervals during the breakfast.
Muffins from the Beginning.
When no other kind is made and there is no dough ready. 1 1/2 pounds of flour. 1 pint of "liquor"-milk and yeast mixed. Make a soft dough of the above over night and add the ingredients of the preceding receipt except the flour, Beat up well in the morning. Sugar in small quantities makes bread crust paper-like, thin and soft. Too much makes bread puddingy. Yolk of eggs counteracts sugar, and dries the bread out, also makes the crust crisp and brittle. White of egg makes thick, tough crust like leather that has been wet and dried. Shortening makes little difference besides lessening the stringiness of well-made bread. Sweet rusks and cakes are slow to rise and slow to bake. Such bread as muffins and Sally Lunn usually rises too fast and too much.
This is a bakery-shop formula written for a cook who already has bread dough proofing at five in the morning; the muffins are an enriched offshoot of it. Everything hinges on beating the batter until it is genuinely elastic — that gluten development is what lets a half-filled ring rise into a domed muffin rather than spreading flat.
- Starting dough2 1/2 pounds taken from a batch of lean bread dough already made up for the morning's breakfast bread. The original does not say what stage the dough is at beyond the hour. Any plain white bread dough works; an unsweetened lean dough is closest to the "French roll dough" the author names, which is why he says no sugar need be added in that case.
- "Liquor"In the second method this simply means the liquid — milk with yeast dissolved in it, as the text itself spells out. A pint is 2 cups. The yeast quantity is not given, and for an overnight sponge of this size a small amount is all that is wanted.
- Butter and milk into warm doughWorking 4 oz of melted butter and 1/2 cup milk into an already-risen dough will look like it is falling apart. Keep working; it comes back together, and the brief rest in a warm place relaxes the gluten before the eggs go in.
- Egg ratioFive yolks to one whole egg is deliberate — the author explains in his own notes that yolks crisp the crust while whites toughen it. Do not substitute whole eggs.
- Hot ovenThe original gives no temperature, only "a hot oven"; modern bakers usually read that as somewhere in the region of 425-450F. Ten minutes is a short bake, consistent with a shallow one-inch muffin, and the direction to bake small lots at intervals shows these were meant to go in and out fast during breakfast service.
- Rings and pansTwo-inch by one-inch tin rings set on a buttered sheet, not the deep cups of a modern muffin tin. Crumpet or English muffin rings are the same idea, though modern ones are usually wider than two inches; a shallow tartlet tin will do. A deep modern tin changes the shape and needs longer baking.
- Batter consistencyThe test given is the useful one: thin enough to settle level in the ring, thick enough not to creep out under the edge. Adjust with the last of the 4 oz flour rather than adding liquid.
- YieldThe original gives no yield; half-filling two-inch rings from this quantity of batter will make a large number of small muffins, which is consistent with the direction to bake small lots at intervals during the breakfast.
This recipe diverts an existing dough rather than starting from scratch: the breakfast bread dough, already risen by five in the morning, is enriched with butter, milk and yolks and turned into a second product for the same service. The "muffin" here is the ring sort that English cooks made — in shallow tin hoops set on a buttered pan and baked in a hot oven — rather than the chemically leavened American cup muffin that had already begun to take over home baking by this period. The closing notes on sugar, yolks, whites and shortening are not part of the recipe at all but a working baker's summary of enrichment, and they are worth reading on their own terms: they state, in plain shop language, the same relationships between egg protein, sugar and crust that later baking science would formalise. Sally Lunn, named alongside muffins at the end, is a related yeast-raised sweet bread of English origin, traditionally said to be named for a Bath baker, though the connection is not documented.