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English Muffins
Use any standard roll recipe, making a very soft dough. Knead lightly until smooth and elastic. Work down and when light again roll out with rolling-pin to about one-fourth inch in thickness. Cut in circles. When light, bake on ungreased hot griddle. As soon as they are brown on one side, turn them over. When both sides are browned, bake more slowly until finished. They may be browned on the griddle and then may be put into the oven to finish baking.
A modification of this recipe may be made by adding enough flour to make a drop batter. Let it rise until light. Drop batter into large, greased English muffin rings, arranged on a greased baking-sheet. Bake in a hot oven until nearly done. Turn rings upside down and complete baking at 400°-450° F.).
This is a method rather than a full recipe: it assumes you already have a yeast roll dough in hand and tells you how to griddle it. A few of its assumptions need translating.
- "Any standard roll recipe"In practice a plain white yeast dough enriched with a little milk, butter, sugar and salt. Make it slacker than a stiff roll dough, as the recipe directs ("a very soft dough"); the softness is what helps produce the open, holey crumb muffins are wanted for.
- "Work down" and "when light"Work down means deflate the risen dough. When light means fully proofed: the cut rounds should look puffed and hold a fingerprint before they touch the griddle, which usually takes 30-45 minutes at room temperature.
- ThicknessA quarter inch is thinner than modern recipes usually specify. Cut rounds about 3 inches across and expect them to rise to roughly double before baking; if you want a tall muffin to split and toast, roll to a half inch instead.
- Griddle heat"hot" here need not mean searing: a moderate ungreased griddle or heavy skillet. Hotter than that and the crust sets before the centre cooks, which is exactly why the recipe tells you to finish more slowly after both sides have coloured.
- DonenessThe recipe leaves timing to judgement. A centre reading of about 200F indicates a fully baked crumb; underbaked muffins collapse into a gummy band once split.
- DustingThe recipe omits it, but rolling the cut rounds in fine cornmeal or semolina before proofing keeps them from sticking and gives the sandy bottom crust associated with the style.
- Muffin ringsThe batter version needs 3- to 4-inch metal rings, greased. Straight-sided tart rings, crumpet rings or opened flan rings all work; the point of turning them upside down at the end is simply to release the muffin and expose the pale top to the oven's heat.
- OvenThe stated 400-450F is right for the batter method. "A hot oven" in the first stage means the same range.
- YieldA dough made with about 4 cups of flour gives roughly a dozen 3-inch muffins. Split them with a fork rather than a knife — tearing preserves the interior holes that catch butter.
English muffins are the griddle branch of the yeast-bread family, cousins to the crumpet and the Scottish bannock, and they belong to a period when many households baked on a flat iron surface over the fire rather than in an oven. The word muffin in Britain has traditionally been taken to mean this flat, ring-shaped griddle bread, though the history of the word is contested; the sweet cup-shaped American muffin is a separate development, which is why this book has to specify "English" at all. That the recipe begins "use any standard roll recipe" is telling: it assumes a reader with a basic yeast dough already in hand, able to divert part of it into a coffee cake, or onto the griddle. The alternative batter-and-rings method is generally the one that produces the ragged, cavernous crumb sold in shops.