Forthcoming

So classes recently started in my PhD program. The last little while has been a whirlwind of orientation, meeting new people, setting up all of the administrative things, and trying desperately to navigate a new public transportation system (which seems to me to make very little sense). In fact, things have been so crazy I missed 2 out of the three trains home on Friday due to inexperience and bad luck.

I did bake my first bread in my new oven as well as a set of English muffins with the same dough.  I will be posting that in the next few days. They were very simple but very delicious.

Also, I just wanted to say that I made some pumpernickel bread with Sue today (I will be posting that bread soon as well). It was a lot of fun and it tasted pretty good for a rye bread, although the loaves were really ugly. She brought over some of her baking for the blog for Servia and me to try. I won't spoil the surprise because she's posting it later this week, but I have to say that it was absolutely delicious. I will put up some sort of alert when she posts it.

However, it may be a few days before I post because I'm buried under all of the reading that I put off this weekend (oops). For now, check out Sue's microwavable chocolate cupcake recipe, which I'll probably succumb to making some night when I'm up late studying.

English Muffins, Reprised: Oat and Barley Varieties

Today it is 103 degrees F. Seriously. Even with fans and a little bit of air conditioning. The last few days have been a hot spell, which has given me more of a chance to experiment with English Muffins.

Barley English Muffin

While English Muffins are traditionally made with recipes that include fat and sweetner, any dough that isn't too wet to hold a clear shape is fine for English Muffins. If you want the English Muffins to have characteristic nooks and crannies, as I've mentioned before, the best way is to make sure that you have a fairly dry dough that yields and open crumb, such as baguette dough.

English Muffins, 2 options

These, as before, are based upon Susan from Wild Yeast Blog's Norwich More Sourdough, but with a modification of the method and the grains. These are wonderful. The barley ones (option 2) especially, although the oat ones are great as well. I think I might try making some with spelt at some point.

Ingredients

Option 1:

Oat English Muffins

• 480g 100% Hydration whole wheat sourdough starter (red whole wheat)
• 300g bread flour
• 475g Red Whole Wheat Flour
• 180g Oat Flour
• 650g water
• 23g Salt

Option 2:

Barley English Muffins

• 480g 100% Hydration whole wheat sourdough starter (red whole wheat)
• 300g bread flour
• 475g White Whole Wheat Flour
• 180g barley flour
• 650g water
• 23g Salt

Method

Day 1:

• Mix the sourdough starter into 625g of the water and then add the flour.
• Mix until the dough forms a homogenous ball. You can do this either with a stand mixer or by hand.
• Cover the dough with plastic ad let it autolyse for half an hour
• Then add in the salt and the last 25g+ of water
• Knead until medium development (passes the windowpane test). Should take about 10 minutes by hand or about 3-4 minutes by machine.
• I found this wasn't sufficient, so I turned it a couple of times by hand and then put it in the refrigerator overnight to let the gluten develop the rest of the way on its own. 
• It sat in the refrigerator for 12 hours. I turned it 2-3 times in the refrigerator before I went to bed with an 45-60minutes in between each term.

Day 2:

• Take the dough out of the refrigerator and turn onto a lightly floured surface.
• Spread it out a little, then cover it and let it sit for 10 minutes.
• Then roll the dough out to about 1" thick.
• Sprinkle the dough with flour and spread the four over it gently with your hands
• Transfer the dough onto a floured cookie sheet, lightly flour the surface of the dough, and cover it with plastic
• Let it sit for about 2.5 hours at room temperature (around 76 degrees).
• Heat up a griddle or a cast iron frying pan, lightly oiled with spray oil to about medium-low heat
• Cut muffins of the desired size. Squares, rectangles, or circles all work. If you don't mind ugly muffins, you can take the excess and push it lightly together. If you let it sit for about 5 minutes, this will make a delicious and perfectly adequate (although not aesthetically pleasing) muffin. Make sure that you dust a little flour on both sides of each muffin. Semolina is traditional, but you can use any flour.
• When the griddle is hot, place the muffins on it and cover with a metal lid. You do not need to oil the griddle, but you may if you wish.
• In about 3-9 minutes the muffins should be ready to flip over. They will puff up nicely and they will have a surface on top that is not crusty, but has a skin from the heat. Unfortunately, you have to judge this by your
• Let them brown on the other side before cooling and eating. You can eat them hot, but they will have more flavor if you let them cool. You may also toast them.

These are delicious and won't heat up your kitchen. Keep in mind, this makes a LOT of English muffins. So, once they are fully cooled, place them in ziplock baggies and freeze them (except for the ones you will eat over the next 2-3 days).


I sent this into Yeast Spotting.

When It's Too Hot to Bake Bread: English Muffins

Almost Whole Grain English Muffins

So I ran out of my morning toast bread, but it's definitely too hot to bake around here. For this reason, I decided to make some English muffins. However, I didn't want to wait a full three days for my awesome oat recipe, so I decided to try something new.

I've been experimenting with oat flour. I know you can't add much to a bread recipe before it compromises the gluten structure, but I wanted to also make the bread as oaty as possible. I'm still working on figuring out the best way to do this. These muffins were not stunningly oaty (I think because most of the flour was whole wheat and it overshadowed a lot of the oat flavor), but they did have a little bit of an oaty taste and they held together pretty well at about 15% oat flour.

English Muffin Crumb

These are not as open and beautiful as my last set, but that may be because I didn't get the gluten structure developed enough last night. However, I might recommend using a little bit more water.

I also had to cheat on the recipe a bit because I forgot to start it until late last night. I'll give my actual version and advice. Adapted from Susan at Wild Yeast's amazing Norwich More Sourdough.

Oaty Mostly Whole Grain Sourdough English Muffins

Ingredients

• 480g Whole Wheat Sourdough Starter (100% hydration)
• 400g First Clear Flour
• 375g Whole Wheat Flour
• 180g Whole Oat flour
• 625g Water adding a little bit more than this, say 650ish might make the crumb more open.
• 23g salt 

Method

Day 1:

• Mix the sourdough starter into 600g of the water and then add the flour.
• Mix until the dough forms a homogenous ball. You can do this either with a stand mixer or by hand.
• Cover the dough with plastic ad let it autolyse for half an hour
• Then add in the salt and the last 25g+ of water
• Knead until medium development (passes the windowpane test). Should take about 10 minutes by hand or about 3-4 minutes by machine.
• If you don't have time (like I didn't) to wait another few hours, put it in the refridgerator immediately (covered in plastic wrap). Or, follow alternative below

Day 1 alternative ending:

• Let is sit for 2.5 hours at room temperature (about 72-75 degrees), folding at 45 min, 1.5 hours, and 2h 15 min.
• Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and spread it a little bit. Cover it and let it sit for 10 minutes.
• Then roll the dough out to about 1" thick.
• Transfer the dough onto a floured cookie sheet, lightly flour the surface of the dough, and cover it with plastic
• Let it sit for an hour and a half at room temperature before transferring it into the refrigerator

Day 2:

Alternative method:

• If you used the alternative method: take the dough out of the refrigerator right before you plan to bake (although no more than 16 hours after you put it in).
• Heat up a griddle or a cast iron frying pan, lightly oiled with spray oil to about medium-low heat
• Cut muffins of the desired size. Squares, rectangles, or circles all work. If you don't mind ugly muffins, you can take the excess and push it lightly together. If you let it sit for about 5 minutes, this will make a delicious and perfectly adequate (although not aesthetically pleasing) muffin.
• When the griddle is hot, place the muffins on it and cover with a metal lid.
• In about 3 minutes, the muffins should be ready to flip over. They will puff up nicely.
• Let them brown on the other side before cooling and eating.

My method:

• Take the dough out of the refrigerator and turn onto a lightly floured surface.
• Spread it out a little, then cover it and let it sit for 10 minutes.
• Then roll the dough out to about 1" thick.
• Transfer the dough onto a floured cookie sheet, lightly flour the surface of the dough, and cover it with plastic
• Let it sit for about 2.5 hours at room temperature.
• Heat up a griddle or a cast iron frying pan, lightly oiled with spray oil to about medium-low heat
• Cut muffins of the desired size. Squares, rectangles, or circles all work. If you don't mind ugly muffins, you can take the excess and push it lightly together. If you let it sit for about 5 minutes, this will make a delicious and perfectly adequate (although not aesthetically pleasing) muffin.
• When the griddle is hot, place the muffins on it and cover with a metal lid.
• In about 3 minutes, the muffins should be ready to flip over. They will puff up nicely.
• Let them brown on the other side before cooling and eating.

These are delicious and won't heat up your kitchen. Keep in mind, this makes a LOT of English muffins. I mean a LOT. So, once they are fully cooled, place them in ziplock baggies and freeze them (except for the ones you will eat over the next 2-3 days).

For reference, if you pick any rustic dough that is not too loose, you can make English muffins just by following the day 2 instructions under "my method."

More on English Muffins

Sourdough English Muffins; Photocredit: Sue

Sue posted an amazing set of pictures, along with her recipe for English Muffins. Her muffins, made with commercial yeast, were fast and easy and they tasted delicious. She added buckwheat and oat for that extra bit of flavor and I think it really kicked her muffins up a notch. You can also try my recipe here.

English Muffins, Part 2

My English Muffins worked! They were actually quite amazing. So were Sue's.

English Muffins, Photocredit: Servia

I took the hypothesis from Tartine Bread that one needs to use some kind of dough that has a reasonably low hydration but also produces a bread with fairly large holes. Corudata's Oat Bread was perfect (which was the base for my English Muffin Recipe) because it is a low hydration bread that acts like a high hydration bread (see crumb shot of oat bread).

English Muffins, Photocredit: Servia

English Muffins, Exterior; Photocredit: Servia

Muffins baking in the skillet, the ugly one was made from leftover dough; Phodocredit: Servia

Sue and I had a day planned to do a taste test between sourdough and commercial yeast English Muffins as I mentioned in yesterday's post. It was a lot of fun. Both of our muffins turned out amazingly, although hers turned out much prettier than mine (see below). Totally coincidentally, both of us added oats to the recipe. Sue also added buckwheat to hers which gave them a delicious earthy flavor and a beautiful color.

Sue's English Muffins; Photocredit: Servia

We both ended up baking them on griddles (her on a real griddle, me in a my great-grandfather's cast iron skillet-- yes, the really do last that long). I was convinced it could never work, but it worked great.

Sue's Crumb; Photocredit: Servia

Sue's muffins, cooking on the griddle; Photocredit: Servia

Try these for yourself. I highly recommend it. And/Or try Sue's recipe. I posted this to Yeast Spotting.

English Muffins, Part 1

So a long time ago I promised that I would make English Muffins with Sue. She is going to make muffins with commercial yeast and I was going to make muffins with sourdough so that we could compare the flavors. I thought it would be a really interesting experiment, especially since I found so many different versions of the recipes online.

However, when I looked more closely, I realized that almost all of them have a chemical rising agent such as baking powder or baking soda which entirely ruins the quest for the difference in taste between sourdough and commercial yeast muffins, so I realized that I had to come up with something different.

When I was thinking about it, I wasn't sure what kind of dough I could use to make good English Muffins. I've never made them before and I'm simply not sure what makes them work. However, I knew that the dough had to be fairly stiff, so that it could survive the cutting, and probably would need to be slightly sweetened. Now that I think about it, the recipe should have oil to soften the crust, but I forgot to put that in at the beginning. In this instantiation of the recipe I will just oil my hands for kneading, but next time I will probably add some into the dough itself to make things easier.

Sulpicia's Sourdough Oat English Muffins (in testing)

Ingredients:

Preferment:

• 100g starter (very active) 100% hydration white or whole wheat based upon preference
• 100g whole wheat flour
• 50g water

Final Dough:

• All the preferment (250g)
• 450g bread flour
• 150g whole wheat flour
• 130g rolled oats (thickly rolled is better)
• 470g cold water
• 17g salt
• 1.5 tablespoon  non-diastatic malt powder
• approximately 15g vegetable oil

Day 1:

• Prepare the pre-ferment by dissolving the starter in water and then mixing in the flour. When it is fully mixed, cover the container and put it in the refrigerator.
• Let it sit in the refrigerator for 18-24 hours. It should have almost doubled in bulk and it should pass the float test.

Day 2:

• When the starter is ready to be used, leave it in the refrigerator for one extra hour.
• Mix together the bread flour, whole wheat flour, rolled oats, non-diastatic, and water together in a bowl into a dough. I put the non-disastatic malt powder in with the salt because I forgot to put it in earlier.
• Let it sit for 1 hour.
• Then mix in the starter, salt, and oil by hand. I put in the oil later because I forgot it.
• Knead by hand for 3-4 minutes.
• Wait 15 minutes. Then do 1-2 stretch-and-folds.
• Wait 15 minutes. Then do 2-3 stretch-and-folds.
• Wait 15 minutes. Then do 1-2 stretch-and-folds.
• Wait 30 minutes. Then do 1-2 stretch-and-folds. Then put the bowl, covered with plastic wrap, into the refrigerator for 15-18 hours.

Day 3:

• 1 hour before handling (3.5 hours before baking), take the dough out of the refrigerator.
• Thoroughly flour a towel or a piece of parchment
• Turn the dough onto the floured surface and press it into a 1" thick disk from the center outward
• Dust with flour and cover with plastic for 2.5 hours.
• Use a cookie cutter about 3" in diameter or a bench knife to cut 3" squares (if you don't mind the odd shape) and cut the muffins.
• Coat the bottom of the pan with vegetable oil and heat on medium-low heat.
• Once the pan is hot, add the muffins. Cover them with a lid.
• In 5-6 minutes, they should puff 2" high. When the undersides are golden brown, flip the muffins and cook until the other side is golden brown/

I am doing the third day stuff today. Cross your fingers that it works!