English muffins are easier than they look

Back in summer of 2020 when we were all making sourdough and crying a lot I attempted to make sourdough english muffins. I had been having decent luck with sourdough loaves, bagels, and discard crumpets, and my sister had sent me a photo of the beautiful english muffins she had made with her children. Certainly, I said, they wouldn't be that difficult... Well, they turned out a little burnt, misshapen and hard as rocks. They tasted pretty terrible, too, and we ate them, but didn't really enjoy them. 

Now that bread is plentiful in the stores again and it would be easy enough to just buy english muffins if I want them, I'm realizing that somewhere in the last 4 years I've turned into a real bread snob. Maybe it was all of the homemade bread and bagels, but Thomas' just aren't doing the trick for me any more, especially at about $5 a bag. So, I've just stopped eating what used to be one of my favorite breakfast foods. As I loudly grieved the loss of english muffins to my husband last week, he gently suggested that I could maybe try a different brand-- maybe some good english muffins? But, too cheap to buy the $8 good english muffins, I decided to give making them another shot. 

I started with this simple recipe from Sugar Spun Run which was easy enough to follow and worked as expected. The dough was a little slow to rise (because our house is always about 62 degrees in winter, but it got there eventually. 

Instead of a skillet, I used my trusty lodge flat top and got another use out of the silicon egg rings I bought for making discard crumpets. The hardest part by far was trying to get the stiff, sticky dough to fill out the rings like I wanted it to. 

As a result, they ended up a little misshaped and the sizes aren't consistent (something to work on next time...) When I baked them, I omitted the cornmeal, because I find it texturally annoying, and used my silpat instead of parchment, which gave me no trouble. 

The result, in less than 90 minutes in total, were 8 soft, delicious english muffins that are admittedly pretty ugly, but so much better than anything you can find it the store. I, for one, am sold.