The Hy(bread)

When reflecting on the different bread products I have made and written about, I realized that I have pretty much run the gamut on pretty much every type- bagels, muffins, bread, rolls, pretzels, corn bread, english muffins, calzones, scones and so on.  So when I finally finished my midterms this past week and was determined to bake something, I needed to come up with someone new to avoid sounding too repetitive.  Basically my baking falls into two categories: 1) over-the-top desserts (aka cookie dough, cheese cake, oreo, reese's peanut cup stuffed goodness) 2) or things I make with flour, yeast and water.  Since I am in the middle of my running season, I try to avoid numero uno unless I have a really good excuse or a really large group of people to distribute them to.  I sadly did not have that type of excuse this weekend so I had to settle with making some yeast product.  

A side note on yeast; I realized that the expiration date on a jar of yeast is only for an UNOPENED jar of yeast.  That would have been nice to know about a year an a half ago as I continued to use my two year old jar of yeast! I have had some failed yeast bread attempts and now I probably know why:  unhappy yeast that was probably over the hill. Apparently yeast jars should not be used longer than 6 months.  I thought I was being thrifty by getting the big jar of yeast but apparently not since I could not have possibly used it in 6 months unless I baked every day.  Anyone who can do that either 1) owns a bakery 2) has a lot more free time on their hands than I do. 

Anyways, in my attempt to come up with a unique product, I settled on English Muffin Bread.  My very strong ambitions to bake emerged fairly late last night so I did not have time to do a long-rise product.  I did find a fairly quick recipe for english muffin bread.  I like english muffins.... and bread... so why not give it a try to combine the two? I used the following recipes with no modification, except that I used my mini-loaf pan instead of the 8by4 pan (only have a 9 by 5 and didn't want to get flatbread!). http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/english-muffin-bread-2

My fresh, young and energetic yeast was also very happy and decided to actually make my bread double (usually I am overly optimistic about my bread's progress.... it's risen a little bit... right???? This time I had no doubt). I also actually measured the temperature of the milk/water mixture to make certain that I don't scald the yeast to death at such a young age :)  I did adjust the baking time a bit to only 30 minutes since I was using my mini-loaf pan.   The result was pretty much as expected, english muffin and loaf form.  Add some butter and honey to a nice toasted slice to complete a wonderful side to a nutritious breakfast (or dinner like I did!).