Claire Makes BA's Best English Muffins

I don't know how I describe English muffins.

They're sort of pillowy, very puffy,

soft, light, complex, crunchy texture on the outside,

all of those nooks and crannies.

(inhales sharply) Super delicious.

(upbeat jazz music)

All right, this is a really fun recipe.

I'm gonna show you how to make English muffins.

They're not something you can only buy at the store.

It is a fun recipe to make at home,

and I will show you a good do-ahead

so that you can try it for your next brunch party.

(upbeat jazz music)

So, I have all my ingredients here.

This is a yeasted recipe, so we start with

one packet of active dry yeast.

So, the first thing we wanna do

with active dry yeast always is proof it.

That just means we wanna make sure the yeast is alive.

Even with recipes where it's not sweet,

this is not a sweet recipe, I like to add

even a little bit of sugar because it does enhance flavor,

and it also makes for better browning.

So, a cup of warm water.

Basically, active dry yeast are yeast granules

that are coated in a dehydrated shell,

and the warm water just dissolves that shell

and activates the yeast.

So, we'll wait for that to get foamy.

So, I can start while my yeast is proofing,

I can start by combining all of these ingredients.

So, buttermilk.

If you don't have buttermilk, you can just use regular milk,

but I love the flavor and tenderness

that you get by using buttermilk.

Two teaspoons salt, two tablespoons oil.

You don't want, like, clumps of butter in there,

so if you need to, you can zap it in the microwave

on low power for 10 seconds at a time.

Just keep an eye on it so it doesn't melt.

And then our three and a half cups of bread flour.

And I have the dough hook on my mixer.

This is a very wet dough, so when I was testing the recipe,

I kept adding moisture because one of the hallmarks

of a good English muffin is all of those nooks and crannies,

and one of the ways that you get those larger air bubbles

in it is to increase the moisture in the dough.

So, in that goes.

Okay.

We really just let the mixer do all the work here.

(mixer whirring)

So, that'll come together.

I start it on low just so I don't, like,

spray flour all over the counter.

So, I want, at the end, it is a wet dough,

so it will be a little bit sticky,

but I want a dough that's very, very smooth and supple.

So, at the moment, it's formed sort of a shaggy dough.

And a lot of the flour is incorporated,

so I can increase the speed. (whirring intensifies)

And if I need to, I'll scrape down those sides.

Okay, so after a few minutes on high speed in the mixer,

the dough started out very, very sticky,

but now it is starting to pull away

from the sides of the bowl.

So, I'm gonna just clean down the sides a little bit.

(bowl clanking)

So while that's finishing up, I'll prepare our bowl.

(aerosol spraying)

So, I think the dough is ready.

It's clearing the sides.

Okay.

And this just goes into this bowl.

I'm using a large bowl so the dough has room to rise.

(scraping against side of bowl)

Okay, then a little bit of plastic over top.

Now, this goes into the fridge

for what we call an overnight proof.

Now, the dough itself is warm

because we added all the liquid.

The buttermilk and the water were warm,

So, this will actually proof in the fridge,

but, you know, as it cools down,

it will also kinda tighten up and make it easier to form

the individual English muffins,

because it is such a sticky dough.

(upbeat jazz music)

Okay, we have our dough that rested

overnight in the refrigerator.

It did gain some in volume, so you can see that,

if I take off the plastic.

So, there's that.

Before we portion it out, I wanna ready our two sheet trays.

So, when you use active dry yeast, usually you do two rises.

So, for the second rise, we do it after we form

the English muffins, and they're gonna rise on these sheets.

So, just to give them plenty of room to rise,

I'll do six per sheet.

And, you know, when you see, like,

the English muffins in the store,

it has that very distinctive cornmeal kinda coating on it.

So, we're gonna use cornmeal to dust the sheets.

And I'm also gonna dust them on top,

so I'll keep this nearby.

Okay, now, I'm going to portion the dough out

into 12 equal pieces.

You can see where those air bubbles were,

that the yeast did its job

and has started to aerate the dough.

Okay, so, for 12, I'll do in half once,

in half again to make quarters,

and then I'll do each quarter into three pieces.

Here I wanna be gentle.

I don't wanna de-gas the dough too much,

because what I'm looking for are those big air bubbles.

So, for each piece, I'm gonna do

kind of a quick forming method

where I basically stretch the gluten

around the surface of the dough,

so that I have a nice, sort of tight, ball.

And really that just means kind of taking the edges

and bringing them into the center.

Like that.

So, I have these little kinda tight packages,

that's more or less in a circle.

So, that's really the only operation you need to do.

If you want to make sure they're really, really round

and perfect, you can kind of, almost like you're forming

dinner rolls, have this sort of tightening action

by sliding the ball across the counter.

And then transfer it seam side down to the cornmeal.

There we go.

So, I'm kind of stretching it out

into kind of a rough square, and then pulling

all of those edges into the center,

and then flipping it over.

Okay, so once you have six to a sheet,

can take a little bit of this excess cornmeal

and dust the tops so the plastic doesn't stick.

So, these are gonna proof again,

and I'm gonna let them swell

until they are almost doubled in size.

They'll get very, very puffy.

So now, just quickly going back

to the other half of the dough.

The quicker you can kinda work that dough, the better,

because fast hands, you know, it, like, sticks less.

Okay, so this is the last one.

Okay, so that just kinda gently drapes over.

And now these guys are just gonna hang out.

And then it's time to cook them.

Okay, it's been 80 minutes,

and these have proofed really nicely.

They are definitely around doubled in size.

If I shake the try, you can see they're clearly air-filled,

'cause they have a little bit of that jiggle.

So, now I'm ready to start cooking them.

So, English muffins are in a category

of baked goods that get griddled,

and then I'm gonna transfer them to the oven

so they can finish baking.

(upbeat jazz music)

So, here I have a griddle that's

over two burners, that's on low.

They're very delicate 'cause they're so puffy,

so I just don't wanna damage them too much,

or tear anything, or pop any air bubbles,

so I'm gonna use two metal spatulas,

and I'm gonna try to get actually underneath the cornmeal,

so that I'm not actually touching any of the dough

and that it makes it a pretty easy transition.

And there's no grease on the griddle at all.

So, one of the things I'm looking for

is I can obviously just lift up with a spatula

and peek underneath, but I'll see the dough start to take on

sort of a more matte consistency around the edges.

It's still a little bit shiny on top.

You could do this if you have a big cast iron skillet,

but a griddle is easier because it has those lower sides,

and obviously a much bigger area,

so it's just a more convenient way

to cook more of them at once.

But a cast iron griddle is a great tool to have.

Often they come with one side as a grill pan,

with the ridges, and then the other side flat.

So, it's useful to have if you make a lot of pancakes

or if you make a lot of English muffins.

All right, so these are starting

to turn a little bit golden.

I like a, you know, I want it to be a dark golden brown.

Certainly not burned.

But I want it to take on a nice amount of color.

The color also happens quickly, though,

so once you see it starting to turn a little bit golden,

keep an eye on it, don't walk away,

because it'll go from golden to burned pretty quickly.

Okay, I'm gonna flip this.

I like the way that the bottom looks.

So, just give it a, ooh!

I'm really bad at flipping stuff.

This is why I don't make pancakes at home.

I'm a terrible flipper.

I don't know why.

So, I'm just gonna do my best.

I've been told that it's a wrist action.

There we go.

I blame being left-handed.

I don't know what that has to do with it.

So, as they finish on the second side,

I'll transfer them into the oven.

I have a baking sheet in there that's already preheating,

so they'll go directly onto a hot sheet try

so they don't cool down too much.

And now I'll just wipe down this griddle,

get all of the cornmeal off,

and I'll start again with the second pan.

Okay, so my first batch has been in the oven five minutes

on the low side, and the first ones, it's been about seven,

so they all should be about baked through.

And now while these cool, I'll transfer

the second batch to the oven, but in the meantime,

these guys can go on this wire rack.

So now, we just wanna wait for these to cool a little bit,

for some of the steam to escape.

They're really nice warm, though,

so they don't have to cool all the way.

And as they cool, you'll see that they'll start to settle

a little bit and they'll get that kind of

telltale waist, we call it, around the sides.

And then I'll show you how to open them,

which is a very important process.

I don't wanna use a knife.

Going to use two forks.

Okay, so this is the second batch, which are done.

The first batch has been cooling for a few minutes.

When you pick 'em up, you can

really feel how light they are.

They're sort of pillowy,

and they have this sort of crunchy side.

Okay, so I'm gonna show you how to split them to eat them.

There's a key technique, and that's using two forks.

So, you fork them open, rather than using a knife.

A knife just kind of, like, slices through all the bubbles,

and so you don't get such an irregular

noon-and-cranny kinda texture.

So, I just put it on its side, and go in along that waist,

and then use a second fork to pull it apart.

And then just work around the perimeter.

This more tears it, rather than slices it,

so you get better texture to hold

the sorta melted butter and jam.

(upbeat jazz music)

Okay, there you have it.

All 12 English muffins.

I love this recipe, it's so much fun.

It's sort of like theater, if you have people over.

They'll be very impressed with you griddling

the English muffins and really making something

that I think a loft of people thought

could only be store-bought.

And they are so much more delicious

than the kind you get in the supermarket.

So, thanks for watching.

Hmm.

Super delicious.

[Off Camera] Can you try one more time?

You said that it's not that easy.

Oh, it's not that easy?

Oh, it's not that hard.

[Off Camera] You said it's not that easy.

Oh. (laughs)

This is not that easy.