Homemade English Muffins

BENTE

well after vaidalia one posted his bread from the other day i was going to make some also but i thought about it and changed my mind.. i had made some sausage balls the other day, cause i didn't eat any over the holiday. while i was at the store i bought two logs of sausage. i wanted to use it and make some bread. so i went looking through the book i got for my birthdasy last month. came up with the engligh muffin idea..

so i made one batch and they turned out ok. but they were not really good. so i decided to try again last night. while i was mixing up the second batch i looked at the recepie to figure out how much olive oil went in. and it was not on the ingresient list :blink: . so i figured out really fast why the first batch sucked. i had used part of a foccicia recepie. it called for 6 tablespoons of olive oil. the muffins called for none :pinch: .

so while i am figuring out once again how much of a dumba$$ i am. i start mixing the second batch. while i am doing that i was speaking with car wash mike. he said it sounds interesting. "take pictures and post" is what he requested. so here they are

here it is after the initial rise



i cut that ball into 6 pieces and placed them on a piece of parchment paper (that had been sprayed with pam and dusted with corn meal).


i sprayed them with pam and dusted the tops with more cornmeal. then let them rise for an hour and fifteen min.



this is where it got weird i had to pan cook them on the stove first to get the outside brown



flipped them so the other side could get the same treatment



them put them into a 350 degree oven for 7 min till i got 200 on the thermapen. then to a cooling rack




so what do you do with english muffins well my favorite english muffin treat is hodag cookies... ok

when i split the muffins open i was surprised cause the one from the first batch was not light and fluffy proabably all that olive oil but the second batch was alot better. i read that you have to do something to get the nooks and crannies that you get with the commercial ones.. i was pleasntly surprised that mine did have some crannies but no nooks.. oh well



they did toast up on the egg really good tho



then the sausage onion bellpepper mix. i also added raging river to the mix when i put it in the food processer



sausage side down till the sausage reaches 160 internally then add tomato paste i like paste better than tomato sauce it is less runny



top with cheese then back on the egg for melty goodness



one on the egg so ya'll still know i have a couple :silly:



last hodag cookie photo



i hope you enjoy the pictures as much as i enjoyed this project.. thanks mike for making me take photos. i finally figured out enough about this computer to post new photos... speaking of which i smoked some cheese over the holiday it was the most cheese i had ever put on the egg there was colby, 7 pounds of swiss, and 2 pounds of chedder. this was a first for me with the swiss and colby it turned out alot better than i thought it would



well i am going to go eat another hodag cookie happy monday to all

Big George's BBQ

Nicely done

fishlessman

now that looks pretty darn good

Little Steven

Terry,

Nice Bud! Was the cheese bitter til it sat for a while?

Steve

Car Wash Mike

Terry that is a fantastic cook. Very well done, muffins look perfect.

Mike

Fidel

What book is that recipe from TB? I make my own english muffins just about every week, but the recipe I use is more of a batter than a dough. I have to use rings to keep them from turning into pancakes.

I do mine inside on the stove top in a cast iron skillet.

BENTE

page 157 of that peter reinhart book you told me about. the aprentice bread baker. the foccia is one the next page :laugh: i should have thought of the cast iron skillett that would have been a good one..

thanks for the heads up on the book the wife got a link to it and it was here in a few days.. pretty good book although parts of it read like stereo instructions :S

BENTE

thanks number one!!!

BENTE

i tried it about 6 days after i smoked it and it was pretty good although i was pretty drunk it was christmas eve and we had family over so the booze was flowing but everyone else liked it.. i also put some out for new years eve but it was almost 2 weeks by that time and everyone drooled over it. sorry but i found out the hard way about smoking cheese cayse the first cheese i smoked we tried it right off and it tasted like toasted marshmellows. which are good but not exactly what i was shooting for. so i kept that first batch and about two weeks later a friend of mine and his wife came over and i told him about it and told him about the marshmellow taste well he did not believe me so i sliced some for him and he called me a lair i sliced me a slice and WOW what a diffrence. so since then i let it age a little in a well sealed ziplock

BENTE

it was i guess i need to learn how to make one of those fishlessman hotdog buns next so maybe i can have one like some of the ones i have seen you have

BENTE

thanks big george

Little Steven

Terry,

I have to get the English muffin recipe. I could do eggs benedict the size of a pie!

Steve

Clay Q

Outrageous! :P

Awesome that you went and made your own English muffins from scratch. You bring Hodags up to the next level ... 'Artisan' Hodags. Nice work!

I'm getting huuuuungry for Hodag Cookies...had enough of Xmas cookies, I have.
Happy Monday back at ya.

CaptainSpaulding

I like the sound of that, Steve. Maybe not gargantuan Benedict, but as much homemade as possible. Buckboard Loin bacon, Homemade English Muffins, Farm Fresh eggs poached and in the Hollandaise. I feel a craving coming on.

Serial Griller

Those look yummy

BENTE

thanks clay


next time i get a boston butt i am going to do the whole thing from scratch.. at least that is what i was thinking when i was opening the log of sausage

Lawn Ranger

Man! Those look good enough to eat! :laugh: Nice job!

BENTE

it is in peter reinhart's book : the bread baker's apprenticelet me know if you don't have it i will type it up for you

BENTE

they are and fairly easy i am prtty simple minded if you didn't get that from the story

Little Steven

BrewandQue,

Me too! There goes New Years resolution #1 :laugh:

Steve

BENTE

thanks Pal!!

CaptainSpaulding

tb,

I just did a quick search for English Muffin Recipe Nooks Crannies and turned up this on a blog called SheSimmers. She's using an Alton Brown recipe that sounds more like what Fidel is doing and she experimented with a little Baking Soda addition.

SheSimmers English Muffins with Nooks and Crannies

I think I need to start saving tuna cans for the rings to try this out.

Joe

BENTE

the beginning of my recepie in the comments section it says::

if you want to get the big holes that the professionals get, you will needto work with a soft, but not stickey, dough and bake or grill at the right time catching them on the rise

i don't know what that time is.. but at the side bar of tha recipe it says::

"instead of cutting open the finished muffins with a knife, use a fork. the commercial brands like to trumpet this as "fork split" english muffins. the advantage is that by running the tines into and around the edge of the bread, the infamous nooks and crevices that are so much of the english muffin mysteque are created"

i did the fork split but i was not sure on the rise part time was i guess i will just have to keep on trying

vidalia1

Great looking muffins Terry...those look great for camping..

I did something similar the other day using that book to make the bread. I mixed the flour, yeast and milk like it said for step one. I gently mixed it all together and set it aside to rise. I checked in an hour and it hadn't risen at all.
I rechecked the recipe and it said to mix the flour & yeast with warm milk...duh . So I threw the first batch away and started all over. It came out much better the second time..

Read the recipe...
:huh: :ohmy:

CaptainSpaulding

I like the way you think. They already look fantastic, but I'm always trying to perfect darn near every recipe I do. It drives my wife nuts.

Joe

2Fategghead

Nice job Terry. Great pic's. I wouldn't mind trying them sometime. If you ever go out of your way typing that recipe up sometime I would not mind giving it a shot. I guess I'm to cheap to but the book. I looked all over at book stores and when I found it they wanted $35. for it and I had already picked out some other books so I left it there.


Talking about smoking cheese I did smoke some about three weeks ago. I must have screwed it up bad because at first it tasted just like when a house was on fire. Then a week later pretty much the same. I smoked mild Cheddar before Christmas and it is starting to mellow but I don't like it so far. I made about seven pounds so I will take some out once in a while and try it. I double wrapped in in cellophane and put each piece in a zip lock bag and I quartered each of the 24oz chunks. Tim

BENTE

i figure if it is good enough to swallow and my family like it i am ok.. although i try to help them give me more critical remarks so i can make stuff better to the way they like it.. that doesan't always work. but i know what you mean about making stuff then trying to perfect it.. this is proabably the 10th time i have made hodag cookies and they were by far my best effort yet

BENTE

how long did you smoke the cheese? i usually only go about an hour.

Ripnem

Very nice Hodags. They look way better than my first stab at it.

Totally agree with the cheese deal. If your gonna do it...then DO IT!

BENTE

yea like i was saying earlier the book reads like steroe instructions :huh: . they were pretty easy though a little intimidating on the first run but after that it was pretty easy.. the muffins said to use stuff at room temprature i just put the cup of milk in the microwave for 25 seconds and stuck my thermapen in.. made my wait alot less long


and camping sounds like a great idea i may have to ring them instead of trying to make them onsite :P

BENTE

yea the first timme i tried them i used tomato sauce it did not go over well!!

but after you make them a couple times they are really simple and great to make at fests cause they are something at regular grate level

i figured no reason to waste space why not add more cheese :laugh: