Sourdough English Muffins...

[Breadhead]

Tomorrow I'm going to serve an AR member, her 2 sisters, and her brother in law, Egg's Benedict for breakfast. Today I made the Sourdough English Muffin which I cooked in my Cast Iron Skillet. They have 15% of the flour as Whole Wheat flour to give it a little extra flavor. I mixed the dough yesterday and let it slow ferment overnight in the refrigerator to give it time to build flavor. Tomorrow I will make a nice Hollandaise sauce, cook the Canadian bacon and hash brown potato's and serve all a nice breakfast...😎

[DWCowles]

Huskee The Chicken King, David Parrish The Steak King, Jerod Broussard The Brisket King, smarkley The Dutch Oven King and Breadhead The Bread King

[Breadhead]

DWCowles

You can call me Breadhead.😎

[Huskee]

You *can't* call me Chickenhead

[DWCowles]

LOL...I didn't think you would like to be call that Huskee I will stick with the chicken King.

[smarkley]

Wow... didnt know you could make those at home!

[Breadhead]

Neither did I until I learned to bake bread. I had so much fun with the Brioche hamburger bun project with Chef Jacob at StellaCulinary.com that I told him we should do the same thing with English Muffins.

Our intent is to make extraordinary sourdough English muffins that are superior to anything you can buy at a grocery store and make it easy to do.😎

Stay tuned...

[David Parrish]

Those are awesome with leftover pulled pork...

[smarkley]

dagummit... that made my mouth water bad, David Parrish

[Breadhead]

Mmmm... That looks awesome!

[mackdaddy]

I'll be over. What time did you say? You have give the recipe and directions to make them. Looks good.

[smarkley]

Yeah Breadhead we need a write up in the recipe section... I know for at least part of it, you put them in a skillet on the stove, which leads me to believe we could maybe use a griddle on a kettle or some other cooker for that..

[Breadhead]

smarkley

Yes... They would be easy on the flat side of grill grates. Use an infrared laser thermometer to get the grill grates to 325°. Use 3.5" ring molds and cook them about 5 minutes on each side, removing the molds when flipping them over. Cook them until the crumb temperature reaches 205°.

They are great for outdoor cooking especially when your kitchen is too hot to cook in.👍

[Breadhead]

mackdaddy . The recipe and process is still in the development stage. I'm collaborating with a professional baker, Chef Jacob, who owns the StellaCulinary website. He's the guy that helped me develope the Brioche hamburger bun recipe.

We decided that we needed to completely master English muffins. We both agree that they would be more flavorful and unique if we used sourdough instead of commercial Dry Yeast. Our intent is to develop a process and a recipe that is simple for the average home cook/baker to make them. They are easier to make than one might think.

Stay tuned... When we both agree we've accomplished our goal of making extraordinary English muffins we will publish it.😎

[mackdaddy]

Great. We will be waiting.

[Huskee]

Funny you posted this, I was meaning to ask you what makes English muffins so different. So I will ask this instead: What makes pretzels taste like pretzels? Other than the obvious being different dough. What's different about pretzel dough?

[Breadhead]

"What makes English Muffins so different?"

English muffins are a rich dough. Meaning it has a fairly high fat content, butter. It also has an extremely high hydration content. The muffins in the picture above are 90% hydration. Meaning you include enough water and whole milk that those 2 ingredients equal 90% of the weigh of the flour in the recipe. We're going to add flavor to our version by using 15% of the flour as Whole Wheat and 30% of the total flour in the recipe will come from our sourdough starter. Getting those big holes that are common in English muffins is a tricky feat when you use that much butter.😎

[Huskee]

Breadhead but pretzels have a unique flavor. You're saying it's not a special dough?

[Breadhead]

@Huskee

You might be surprised how little difference there is in bread recipes. Pretzels have sugar and course salt. That gives you the sweet but salty taste.😎

Pretzel recipe:
2 1⁄4 teaspoons yeast
1 1⁄4 cups warm water
1⁄4 cup packed brown sugar
2 cups bread flour
1 cup water
1 tablespoon baking soda
coarse salt (optional)
2 tablespoons butter, melted (optional)

[Huskee]

Breadhead so the extra sugar helps give it that characteristic extra dark brown look, from Maillard, which then assuming is what gives it it's unique taste?

[Breadhead]

Yes... Sugar helps brown the crust of bread, the maillard effect. But yeast/sourdough starters love sugar. If you overproof your dough the yeast will deplete the sugar content and you will end up with a blond loaf, very little browning in the oven.

However those dark brown crust colors of Pretzel buns was mostly caused by mopping the final shaped dough with just the yoke of an egg right before you put it in the oven. Using just the yoke will give you a darker shiny finish. Using just the egg white or just milk will give you the light brown finish like the hamburger buns you buy at the grocery store.

On my Brioche buns I use just the yoke of an egg and I top that with both light and dark sesame seeds. That gives you a dark shiny finish and the light and dark sesame seeds give it a pretty visual appearance.

If I were making soft Pretzels or Pretzel shaped buns I would baste it with just egg yoke and then top it with coarse ground Sea Salt. The brown sugar in the dough will give it a slight sweetness but the coarse ground Sea Salt will give it the kick.

[Huskee]

Breadhead Interesting, thanks for the info. I coulda Googled it I suppose but always better to ask a person in the know.

[Breadhead]

Huskee .

I think you're slowly stepping toward becoming a Breadhead.😎

Maybe you need to make some pretzels. That would be a good first bake.

[chudzikb]

Another high fat content effort. Damn, another thing my wife will not let me make...sadly...

[Breadhead]

Sometimes it's better ask for forgiveness than it is to ask for permission.😎

[chudzikb]

Oh, I get that one, but, I am working on a terminal case of the "fatass" can't do that by eating a lot of fat, sad, but, true.

[Breadhead]

Getting closer to fine tuning our Sourdough English Muffin formula and processes. We're getting the taste profile we want but we are not quite there in visual appearance. Stay tuned my friends.😎


Tomorrow I'm going to serve these English muffins to my taste tester's with Egg's Benedict. I think they will like them.🙈

[Danjohnston949]

Drizzled with Butter, topped with a slice of ham or bacon and an over medium fried egg and I don't beleave I would notice the slight imperfection in the muffin!

[Breadhead]

Breakfast has been served...

My taste tester's loved the sourdough English muffins and the Egg's Benedict. I cheated on the hash browns though.😎

All went well.

[smarkley]

where do I sign up to be a taste tester????

[Breadhead]

LOL... There is a waiting list. However there is an opening now. My 38 year old son has officially resigned as one of my taste tester. He complained that he had gained 20Lbs from testing my food and bread. He said all of my taste tester's gain about 30lbs and he needs to resign now before he joins the 30lb overweight club.😆

[Breadhead]

Ok new experiment... I decided we need to increase the hydration (water/milk content) to make this dough pourable, like a pancake batter - 110%/120% hydration. Because it is sourdough I think we need to bake it hotter, like 450°. I tried it and it came out better.😜

Tomorrow I'm going to mix a batch of dough at 120% hydration (almost like a pancake batter) and pour it into the ring molds and bake it at 500°. The project is progressing nicely.😎