Homemade English Muffins

You’ll need yeast, warm water, white wheat flour (or hard white wheat, ground), salt, kefir/buttermilk, coconut oil, honey, egg, and cornmeal. In the bowl of your stand mixer, combine the yeast and warm water. Stir it up and bit and let it sit for 10 minutes until it gets foamy. It’s pretty cool. It’s ALIVE! Yeast is just so much fun….and I haven’t killed it yet. After 10 minutes, add kefir/buttermilk, coconut oil, honey, and one egg. Turn the mixer to 1 and let it mix until combined. Oh, and use the dough hook. I think about Captain Hook every time I make bread.When everything is well combined, add some white wheat flour and salt. Once it’s all mixed up, let the mixer knead it for you – about 6 minutes. As you can see, mine looks a bit wet. Most of the time when you make bread, you want the dough to be springy and not stick to your hands. However, with fresh ground flour I’ve found you have to let it be a bit stickier. If you don’t, you’ll have dry bread. As the bread rises, it will continue to absorb the moisture from the flour. You’ll find that eventually it will be perfect and not sticky at all. So, don’t keep adding flour until it looks right – give it some time first. You can always add flour at the end if you think it’s too sticky.

After the 6 minutes, put your dough into a greased bowl (turning it over so that all surfaces are coated) and cover it. Let it rise until doubled. “They” always say an hour, but mine almost always takes longer than that. I just keep a close eye on it….unless I get distracted by Annie pouring my fabric softener for dryer sheets all over the bathroom floor. Yes, in case that happens it’s okay to forget the bread for a minute.And yes, that is a shower cap.  😀

Punch the dough down (admit it, that’s fun) and turn it out onto a surface coated with cornmeal. Now we’re getting fancy like the ones in the store! Pull off pieces of the dough and form into little muffins. You can use a biscuit cutter, but why bother? Flatten them out just a bit. The cornmeal will keep them from sticking to your hands. You should get 8-12 muffins. I go for 8 because we like using them for breakfast sandwiches and the size of a batch of 8 works great with a fried egg.  Once they are formed, cover them with a towel and let them raise about 20 minutes.

Heat a griddle to medium-low heat. For me, I use the 325 setting (the same setting for French toast). VERY CAREFULLY transfer the raised muffins to the griddle. You don’t want them to lose much of their height. Cook for 5 minutes and then VERY CAREFULLY flip them over to cook another 5 minutes. As you can tell, this isn’t a good project for a day that you have the jitters……or a jumping 2 year old. Or low flying planes…..or trash pick up.

Once they are done on the griddle, move them to a cookie sheet and stick them into a 350 degree oven to finish cooking. It will take about 8 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool completely. Ta da! You just made English muffins. Don’t you feel so…..English?Yes, that is a hammer. Try to ignore it. I’m not entirely sure how it got there.

Once mine are completely cool, I put them in a Tupperware box and store them in the freezer. When I want them in the morning (or for a lunch sandwich) I just take them out and toast them in my toaster oven. They taste like I just made them! Our favorite way to enjoy them is with a fried egg and piece of cheese – almost like McDonald’s…..but BETTER.