Saturday, March 31, 2012

English Muffin Bread


My mom called the other day and told me about a book that had just been profiled on NPR. The author had tried to make all kinds of things homemade. At the end of their adventure, they discovered that some things were best to make at home, and others just weren't worth it at all.

The book was called Make the Bread, Buy the Butter: What You Should and Shouldn't Make From Scratch. Jennifer Rease looked at ease of preparation, cost and general quality to determine which foods she should make and which foods she should buy. She recommends making your own guacamole and yogurt and buying your hamburger buns and potato chips.

I think the homemade Lucky Charms that Stephanie at the Cupcake Project made are an excellent example of this. She warns that you'll end up spending days making the Lucky Charms and get blisters all over your fingers.


No thank you.

Instead, I've been trying to figure out what foods I'm only going to eat if I make them myself (or order them at a restaurant). Take ice cream, for instance. I have an ice cream maker. I have The Perfect Scoop. Homemade ice cream is incredible. I should really never buy store-bought ice cream.


Or pesto. What could be easier than blending up some fresh veggies with a bit of cheese and oil?

It's bread where I'm really stuck. I've got Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice, but I still can't keep a sourdough starter alive to save my life (I just forget to feed it). I make a lot of quick breads but not that many super healthy ones

I'm baking my way through The Bread Baker's Apprentice, but I definitely think I need to diversify the breads I make if I'm going to officially take the only homemade plunge.


This bread is an attempt to do that. It's an English muffin bread, and it is remarkably similar to an English muffin, with quite a few less holes. It keeps at room temperature for a week; for any longer, it freezes beautifully. Toasted with a bit of butter and salt it's absolutely delicious.

Best of all, it comes together quickly. Definitely important if I want to make bread making part of my regular routine.

What are the foods you always make? What do you only eat if it's homemade? 



English Muffin Bread
recipe adapted very slightly from Foodie With Family

This recipe yields two loaves of bread. I kept one loaf at room temperature for a week, and I froze the other loaf almost immediately. 

Ingredients
2 3/4 cup warm water
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon plus 1 1/2 teaspoons sugar
1 tablespoon plus 1 1/4 teaspoons instant yeast
5 3/4 cup bread flour or all-purpose flour (I used a combination of both because that's all I had
4 tablespoons butter, melted

In a large bowl, combine flour, sugar and salt. Stir well, then add instant yeast and warm water. Stir all the ingredients together by hand until the mixture is combined. 

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap. Let the dough sit for an hour until bubbly and puffy.

Butter two standard loaf pans. Pour a little coarse cornmeal into each pan, covering the sides of each pan with cornmeal. 

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. 

Divide the dough evenly between the two pans. Cover each pan loosely with plastic wrap. Allow the loaves to rise for about an hour, until they have doubled in size and the top of the dough rises over the pan. 

Place the loaves in the oven for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, pull out the loaves one at a time and cover them generously with melted butter. Return the loaves to the oven and continue baking for 7 to 12 minutes more, until they are golden brown. 

Remove the loaves from the oven. Immediately flip them out of the pan onto a wire rack and pour more melted butter over the top. 

Allow the bread to cool completely before slicing. Serve toasted, with more butter and jam. 

14 comments:

  1. Hm, that book sounds interesting; I'll have to check it out! Although I have to disagree with the hamburger bun thing: super easy to make and sooooo much better than store-bought! If you're interested in making your bread from scratch but don't want to take the time required with many of the BBA breads, check out PR's Artisan Breads Every Day. Many of the same types of breads, but they're all easy: spend five minutes mixing up dough in the evening. Shape and bake in a couple hours the next day. My go-to recipes for buns, sweet dough (for cinnamon rolls, etc), ciabatta, baguette, pizza are all from there. KAF also has some good quick fridge doughs to keep on hand to use to make buns or rolls, too. Love making yogurt and ice cream. Tried butter, but too much work (and too expensive!) to do regularly. Fun topic!! :) The English muffin bread looks great!

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    1. Abby, I will definitely have to check out that book. Thanks for the recommendation. Having something a little quicker than BBA would definitely make a difference. I will have to look into homemade yogurt too.

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  2. I'm going through a phase where I am excited about making as much as possible from scratch, but I know that some things aren't worth it, like from scratch pumpkin puree! But peanut butter, on the other hand, is easy to make and delicious. I love this bread, I've been planning to make English Muffins for a while now, but haven't gotten around to it. The bread sounds even easier, thanks!

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    1. Sue, I certainly agree with you on the pumpkin purée. That one is not worth it to me either. Peanut butter sounds like a lot of fun though. I love all this inspiration!

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  3. If only I had read this before making yet another sourdough loaf yesterday! Next time, definitely. I've been making all of our bread lately. We're not big fans of Wonderbread-type bread and it's much less expensive to make our own artisan-style bread than to buy it. I have made my own butter (and still do occasionally) but more for reasons of experimentation, certainly not for economy! Have you read the book? It's one I have on my wish list. :)

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    1. Yes, I think I'm going to have to make the bread commitment. Making my own butter sounds really fun, but I don't think I've tried it since I was a kid and we shook a jar of cream until we got something butter-like out of it. I haven't read the book yet, but I think I'll have to add it to my wish list too. It just keeps getting longer and longer!

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  4. How funny–my comments are pretty much the same as Abby's. I think homemade hamburger buns are totally worth it. Tortillas, on the other hand, were more work for me than I thought was worth it, so I buy those. (but I'm glad I've tried them at least once!) ABED is an awesome book; I totally second that recommendation. I made the starter from that book & it's tucked away in the back of my fridge. I only feed it if I'm planning to use it. It's been sitting dormant in my fridge for a couple months before & still been fine once I feed it a couple times.

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    1. I'll have to try the sourdough starter from their Di. Maybe I gave up on mine to early. I definitely need to make one that I can only feed occasionally. The every few day feeding was hard for me. That's too bad about tortillas. Homemade tortillas just sound so delicious!

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  5. I had no idea you could even make Lucky Charms at home... Wow. Homemade ice cream is definitely better than store bought. I don't have a machine, but I borrowed my friend's last year and it was delicious. I'm kind of on the fence with bread though. It's not that it's extremely difficult to make bread, it's just that it's really annoying when your yeast doesn't activate properly or your bread sticks to the pan or it deflates... But homemade bread really does taste better than storebought.

    This English muffin looks delicious! I imagine it would taste so good with some scrambled eggs and maybe some bacon...

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    1. I bet the bread would definitely taste delicious that way. I mostly had it toasted with butter, which was quicker for work in the morning, but I wish now that I had some left to try that way. Next time!

      I hear you on the yeast with bread. I've set out to make batches of bread before where the combination of yeast isn't quite right, and the whole recipe isn't as successful as I know it could be. I think I need to do some more experimenting before I really commit to only homemade.

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  6. Love love love PR's English Muffin Bread...that and the English Muffins are some of the ones I make over and over again. The English Muffin Bread makes such great toast! Yours looks wonderful...need to make that again soon.

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    1. Ooh! I haven't tried his English Muffin Bread yet. Can't wait to try it out!

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  7. I've made this english muffin bread and really loved it! Some things I think are ALWAYS worth making at home are pesto, cranberry sauce, bread, any kind of citrus curd, pizza, bbq sauce. Some things maybe not so worth it - cheese.

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    1. I just made my first curd last night. I tried a lemon curd, and I absolutely loved it. I'm excited to try out more of those. So far, ricotta cheese is the only cheese I've felt like was really worth it to make. I can't imagine the others being worth it!

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