English Muffins

Once in a while, I actually do what a food blogger should do: make up recipes.  Usually I  use already developed recipes with small adjustments (peanut butter chips for chocolate chips... *gasp*) that I don't feel comfortable crediting as my own.  However, this time around, a deficiency of a few vital ingredients forced me to essentially create my own recipe for..... English Muffins!

 I love English Muffins, but often don't buy them at the store because I find them ridiculously overpriced.  $4 for 6 English muffins that are probably going to go bad in 2 days??? I don't think so.  I've run the gambit on other bread products- bagels, pretzels, bread, regular muffins, etc- but I have never done english muffins.  This is another episode of cooking without Gertrude, since the odd part about English muffins is that instead of putting them in the oven, you heat them up on the griddle (okay let's be honest, I don't have a fancy griddle-  I used a skillet).  I guess the British had had enough of finicky ovens like Gertrude and resorted to other heating sources.

Here is the recipe I used for the muffins: 

1/4 cup warm water
1 tbs yeast
3 cups whole wheat flour
1/4 vital wheat gluten
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup water
1/3 dry milk powder
3 tablespoons oil
1 tablespoon honey
1 egg
Whipping this together, I was a bit skeptical- I am always a bit skeptical when powdered milk is involved. The stuff has the oddest texture.  But it ended up working out  Anyways here is the process

1.  sprinkle yeast in 1/4 cup warm water (about 105-110 degrees F) in a bowl and allow it to become foamy (about 10 min) 
2. mix flour, salt and vital wheat gluten in a different bowl
3.  In another bowl (sorry for all of the bowls!) mix together the milk powder and water to make "milk" and add the oil, honey and egg.  
4. Add half of the liquid mixture into the flour mixture, followed by the yeast, followed by the other half. 
5. mix until smooth and then return to a floured surface to knead for about 5 min. 
6. let rest in covered bowl for about 1 hr until it doubles in size.  Ideally, this should be a warm place- luckily, I just plopped the bowl on my backyard and prayed that no woodland creature would try to snack on it.  It was just fine. 
7.  flatten out to about 1/2 inch and use  some object with a 3 in diameter to cut circles.  The dough was a little bit hard to cut, so I used a pizza cutter to cut the circles. 
8. let rest for another 20-30 minutes
9.  heat up a skillet and cook each side for 3 minutes, until the tops become golden but not burnt.  
10.  enjoy with cheese, peanut butter, a slab of butter or a drizzle of honey (probably not all of those together)