English Muffins

Saturday, July 15, 2006
We're having a heat wave here in the far northland, so I'm moving to my list of "July breads"--breads that don't involve turning on the oven. These don't require an oven because they're "baked" on the griddle (my new electric griddle, yet another bread purchase, worked wonderfully). Homemade English muffins--I had to ask myself whether these were worth the bother since you can buy perfectly good English muffins. I discovered it's little like asking yourself if it's worth buying a hunk of Parmigiano Reggiano when you can buy perfectly good Parmesan in a green shaker or whether it's worth buying expensive French or Greek olives when you can buy perfectly good California ones in a can.
These English muffins don't really taste much like the ones you buy in a package. Although mine didn't have as many holes and valleys as the packaged ones do, they made up for it by tasting more like bread than cardboard. The dough is easy to make, although it calls for several long periods of refrigeration. If you read the recipe ahead of time, it's easy enough to accommodate this. I made the sponge on Thursday night, put it in the refrigerator, mixed it up and let it rise last night, put it in the refrigerator again, and rolled the dough out and let it sit for its final rise this morning. I finished them at a reasonable breakfast time. Although Jim had already had his first breakfast, which he eats by 6:00 a.m. without fail, he was willing to have a second one. (His record is, I believe, three breakfasts--a happy day for him!). Someday, when I'm feeling really decadent, I could have made some kind of eggs mcmuffin with these--maybe using Nueske bacon and sharp cheddar, but not today, when it's supposed to get up to 100.