Okay, so most of you have made my pizza dough recipe. I am working on recipes that use that recipe just in different ways. So far, I have made pretzel buns, pita bread (haven't shared the full how-to yet), and now English muffins! I love when simple recipes can be morphed into something that seems more complicated. I also love multi purpose recipes. So I will be sharing more recipes that use this dough! Same dough...different techniques.
These are wonderful and a perfect way to use leftover pizza dough. You can also just make the pizza dough recipe, and use it to make these wonderful English muffins. These are easy to freeze and pull them out as needed. My best tip is to wait until they are completely cooled to cut them in half, and then put them in a freezer bag. The night before you need them, pull a few out and put them on the counter to defrost. Make sure to cover them overnight. or put them in a bag. They will be ready for your breakfast assembly!
We ate these with chicken sausage patties and eggs for an incredible breakfast sandwich.
Fresh Milled English Muffins
Makes 20-24
Ingredients:
2 cups of warm water
2 tbs honey
1/2 TBS salt
1/3 cup olive oil
1 1/2 TBS instant yeast
4 cups of fresh milled flour (3 cups hard white or red wheat berries, add 1/4 a cup for extra flour to dust)
Directions:
Warm water, add honey and yeast to a glass cup or bowl. Let it get foamy.
Add 4 cups of flour, salt, olive oil to a large mixing bowl. Add the Water yeast mixture to the large bowl with the flour mixture. Mix with a dough hook or by hand. It will need to be sticky but pull away easily from the side of the bowl.
The more dry the dough, the more dense and tough it will be. Sticky = light and airy. Knead for 5-8 minutes to develop the gluten. Cover and let rise for 45 minutes.
I love to use my bread machine for this process because it saves me so much time. I create a custom setting that is just to knead (20 minutes) and do the first rise (45 minutes). I throw all the ingredients into the machine and press start. An hour later, it beeps and I can start the hands on part of the making something.
After 45 minutes, preheat oven to 325 , and heat a heavy skillet on medium high heat. Punch the dough down. Flour your working surface, and turn the dough out. Shape into a large ball. Here is a video on how to do this.
Split the dough in half. Dust the working surface and dough with more flour to prevent sticking. Roll the dough out to about an inch thick. Use a biscuit cutter and cut out your circles. Take the excess dough, shape into a ball, and roll it out again to get more muffins. Do the same process with the second half of your dough. You can absolutely do it all at once, I just like to work with dough in smaller portions, I think it is easier.
Dust the circles with flour on both sides, and place them on a hot skillet. Let them brown on each side and then put them on a baking sheet. This is my favorite baking sheet on the planet. They are non toxic and non stick, and everything bakes so evenly and wonderful on them!
Bake them on 325 for 6-8 minutes or until the internal temperature is 190 degrees if you want to be precise.
Enjoy!