Best Homemade English Muffin Recipe

If at First You Don’t Succeed…

I like making bread. I make a fine loaf, even if I say so myself. I’ve had bread nailed for a couple of years now. At some point I thought I’d try muffins. They were bad. Awful. Dense, tiny, pathetic little things. Often under cooked, therefore uneatable. I lost count of how many muffins ended up in the kitchen bin. I tried lots of recipes and always got bad results.

Youtube Saves the Day (Again)

Everything changed when I watched a video on Youtube by a guy called Brian Lagerstrom.

I already have a dough recipe that works great for bread so I modified that slightly. What changed everything was how he cooks his muffins.

My English Muffin Recipe

Makes 4 large muffins

Ingredients

• 2 cups strong flour¹
• 1 cup warm water (for yeast)
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp granulated sugar
• ½ tsp dried yeast
• 1 tbsp of sourdough starter²
• ½ tsp sunflower oil
• 1 tsp of clarified butter³
• ¼ cup of coarse cornmeal

Method

• Put flour into a large bowl, add the salt and sugar and stir in
• In a small bowl, add water to the yeast (yeast is ready when bubbly)

• Add the yeast to the flour and stir until it’s a shaggy mess. If it’s too wet, add some flour. Too dry? Add warm water.

• Add the sunflower oil to the sides of the bowl⁴
• Cover with cling film for about 20 / 30 minutes
• Wet your hands and fold the dough a few times. This is important to build strength in the dough
• After another 20 / 30 minutes, fold the dough again
• Leave covered until doubled in size

Tip: In the winter, you can kill two birds with one stone (pun intended) — season your pizza stones / steels and use the oven warmth to warm up your dough!

• On a well floured surface, shape the dough into four discs. Once shaped sprinkle cornmeal underneath and on top of muffins. Leave to rise again for 20 / 30 minutes

• Sprinkle some cornmeal into a large frying pan and add the clarified butter and set to medium heat

• Carefully move each muffin into the pan

• Cook for exactly 5 minutes per side

• Carefully flip the muffins to cook the other side

• Remove from the frying pan and place on cooling rack

• Slice muffins when cooled, place in grill

• Behold the amazing nooks and crannies that will fill with butter⁵:

• After both sides have been grilled, spread butter (plus whatever topping your prefer) generously on the muffin

• Eat, and realise — you can never buy muffins again⁶

Notes

You can freeze these muffins to eat later. I just put mine in an airtight container (it’ll need to be large as these muffins come out big) and they get eaten quickly.

The other half and I have these in the evening. Re-heated under the grill, generously spread with butter (and vegemite in my case). They’re also great to have with raspberry jam in the morning. You could also take your sausage and egg muffins to the next level at lunchtime.

Footnotes

¹ I’ve also used 1 cup strong, 1 cup plain. Just as good as 2 cups of strong

² If you haven’t got a starter, use 1 tsp of dried yeast. I’d recommend making a sourdough starter though.

³ Brian uses a lot of clarified butter in his recipe. I find this makes them too damp for my liking.

⁴ By adding to the sides of the bowl, the oil won’t interfere so much with the dough rising.

⁵ The nooks and crannies are unpredictable. I think a longer rise after shaping gives more. Not certain though.

⁶ These muffins are so good that my other half and I eat them nearly every night. Far better than toast.