L O V E.

MANY months ago, Jeff and I made the Bread Bakers Apprentice English Muffins. If I recall correctly, they took 68 days to ferment and proof and retard and proof again and punch down and degas and proof yet again and shape and pan fry and teach Spanish to and then bake… But they sure were good.

And that wild raspberry compote – Amazing… My idea by the way.

Of course now I can’t JUST BUY English Muffins in the grocery store anymore. I don’t know if it was the wonderful taste of the home made muffins that ruined it or the fact it was the first BBA bread I baked with my brand spanking new at the time baking assistant… Emphasis on the… well… never mind.

Bottom line is they are my do all – end all breakfast bread favorite, but I neither have the time, the patience nor the damn space in my little kitchen to whip up a batch whenever my lil’ ole heart desires. So I came up with the next best thing. I created the English Muffin – Muffin. And whoa… full of AWESOME!

So simple… so tasty… so full of all the little nooks and cranies that you have grown to love.

That, my friends. Is an English muffin – muffin. And what makes that particular English muffin – muffin even sexier, is that it is the toasted muffin top. Have MERCY!

Imagine in just a short while you can have your very own fresh baked English muffin – muffins for breakfast! Lunch! OR Act now and have them for DINNER! The recipe is very simple…

You need the following:

2 1/2 t instant yeast
2 t sugar
1/4 cup warm water
1 t salt
1 C warm butter milk (I used 1% milk here also with success)
2 C AP flour (+ 1/4 more if needed)
1/4 t baking soda
cornmeal for dusting

The so so so hard steps to muffin greatness:

Add the yeast, sugar and warm water to your bowl and let proof for 10 minutes.

While proofing, heat the milk.

AND In a separate bowl combine the flour, salt and baking soda.

AND prepare your muffin pan by spraying with oil, and then dusting with corn meal.

When the yeast mixture is all foaming at the mouth, add the flour and milk, by alternating between the two. Ya know – add flour to the yeast mixture, then milk, then flour then milk till a heavy batter is formed. You will NOT have a typical bread dough for this. Think gut bomb pancakes.

Pour or spoon batter into prepared muffin pan about three quarters (plus) of the way full. DO not get over zealous here and fill it more. You will have a freaking mess on your hands.

Spray top with oil and cover with plastic wrap and let rise 30 to 45 minutes. You need to pay attention here or again – big freaking mess.

Preheat oven to 350°

Uncover the muffins gently. Dust lightly with corn meal and bake till golden, about 20 minutes.

Remove from oven and let cool before attempting to slice or toast.

BIG LOVE for these muffins as they are so easy to make and super delicious and if you slice it the right way you get an English Muffin Muffin Top *Gasp!*. How completely full of CRAZYis that?

I am also experimenting with adding cheeses and meats to the muffins, with GREAT success. The key is to NOT add it to the batter, but rather to the muffin tin AFTER you add the batter (Also add significantly less batter…) but before it rises. Any additions of herbs or spices however should be added to the batter while mixing.

Without further wasting of your time I present the breads.

Kaiser Rolls

We skipped the Kaiser rolls on purpose because making 16 kaiser rolls for 2 people is just plain dumb.  Instead we waited for the next party and they were a hit.  Heck with the purpose of an absolutely worthless kaiser press they almost came out looking really special.

This model of kaiser roll is being served with slow smoked pulled pork.  Not pictured is BBQ sauce because I have killed people for less.

Poolish Baguettes

Hmmm….they are baguettes with whole wheat.  Not great not bad.

Pizza Napoletana

Not my favorite pizza dough in the book so far.  I thought the Pain a l’Ancienne made a far better pizza dough.  No picture was taken but instead here is a picture of a dog dressed like Rudoplh

(You can buy prints of this image from: http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-7762421-dog-dressed-up-as-rudolph.php)

Panettone

This bread matched my previous blog to a T because it was a freaking disaster.

• 4 days for a seed culture
• 1 day for a barm that has a disclaimer about the smell knocking you on your ass.
• 2 days for the actual bloody bread

Oh yeah did I mention this is also a dreaded fruit bread?????  Yeah we tried, we failed, and we move on.  We also have no desire to even think about attempting this bread again.

Here is a picture of a waiter cat:

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Portuguese Sweet Bread

Now this was one sexy looking bread.  I gave a loaf to a guy at work for helping me out of a jam.  He commented the bread was awesome toasted with Nutella.  Dang it why did I not think of that!!!!!

Pugliese

Another holey ciabatta like bread and after a while yep they all taste the same…….

The reason for skipping the Potato Rosemary bread  is it needs mashed potatoes….off to the store for potatoes!

If you want to see the previous BBA breads they are spread around our previous blogs.  Mine was Culinary Disasters and Heather’s blog was Bodacious Girl