Claire Saffitz Makes Classic English Muffins | Dessert Person

let's think about all the positives it's basically spring the u.s is vaccinating 3 million people a day that's the end of the list of positive things but those are two very positive things hey everyone i'm claire i'm in my home kitchen today i'm showing you a recipe from dessertperson the only one in the book that is not actually baked it's my english muffins and i'm going to show you how to get those really classic nooks and crannies it's really fun to make [Music] person i love english muffins well do i love english muffins i love the breakfast sandwich on english muffin so i think that i made this recipe as a means of making the most delicious breakfast sandwich possible which i'm gonna make and it's really satisfying when you look at a homemade english muffin and it looks just like the kind out of the package but it tastes ten times better you know the origin of english muffins do you absolutely really this is like a thing people know for sure what is the origin of the english muffin guess it's from england wrong i don't know how english muffins became a thing but i did look to english crumpets an actual english thing as sort of a jumping-off point for this recipe because i'd made english muffins in the past from a pretty firm dough and they looked great but they didn't have the nooks and crannies so i am borrowing from crumpet making technique and using a super wet dough that gives you those lots of nooks and crannies this recipe does need a stand mixer you could sit there make it by hand with a wooden spoon but you would be stirring for a long time because it's such a wet batter it's much much easier in the stand mixer with the dough hook so i have that right here in terms of ingredient list it's really simple stuff and very straightforward i have some bread flour kosher salt a little bit of butter active dry yeast two tablespoons honey a little bit of whole wheat flour which is optional but recommended milk and cornmeal for dusting oh and vegetable oil which is not really an ingredient in the english muffins but you need to keep everything well greased and not sticky so the first step in the recipe is to do something called scalding the milk scalding means i'm going to bring it up to a temperature just under boiling and basically the milk will get to the point where also to see little tiny bubbles collecting around the sides of the pot the surface will have a little bit of a skin on top and that's where i am at that temperature right below boiling i'm gonna hold it there for 30 seconds a minute and turn it off and then i have salted milk and i guess in the meantime i can put my dry ingredients inside my mixing bowl so i'm using bread flour red flour has a higher protein content the higher protein content means that when i mix the dough it will produce more gluten then i add about a quarter cup of whole wheat flour i'm just really adding it because i like the flavor two teaspoons kosher salt i'm using diamond if you're using morton at home which is the other widely available brand use half that amount one teaspoon active dry yeast i'm gonna go through the motions of proofing yeast but i made a version of this dough last night and i've used this jar of yeast i know it's good i didn't bother with proofing i just added everything to the mixing bowl and got it going so this step is optional if you're confident that your yeast is alive and well i'm going to use some of the warm milk to proof the yeast so i'm going to take this off the heat it's just been sitting here right at that just below boiling temperature for about a minute i'm going to turn it off okay so you can see there's like a little skin on the surface so when i jiggle it there's like little tiny wrinkles that are forming on the surface as the milk underneath the skin moves around that's off the heat i'm gonna whisk in butter i have two tablespoons and my honey so whisk that together now this is the part of the recipe that requires a little bit of patience because i want this mixture to cool down but if i were to use it at this temperature which is close to boiling it's probably around like 190 degrees or so it would kill the yeast so i need this to cool down to more of like a lukewarm tepid temperature and so you can just leave it at room temp go do something you know fold some laundry or whatever come back or you can do what i'm gonna do because we're on the clock today uh and i'm going to stir it over a little bit of an ice bath so if you're not using a thermometer basically what you want to do is go by touch if body temp is around 98.6 you want something that feels just slightly slightly warm this should cool down quickly so i'm at around 100 which is maybe even like slightly cooler than i wanted but oh well so i'm gonna grab a tablespoon measure and two tablespoons of the warm milk mixture dissolve the yeast i'm sorry with active dry yeast there are yeast particles that are coated in this kind of dehydrated shell and they're like little tiny granules and so you just want to dissolve the coating and that will help to activate the heat so that's why i'm whisking so let that sit for a few minutes and then i'll put together the dough in the stand mixer how's feeling okay well oh god felix is great you guys felix is fine i do think he's possibly developed a chronic form of pancreatitis because we just he was having the same symptoms and we took him back to the vet and she was like he's okay but he's not that young anymore felix isn't a kitten he's he's fine guys thank you for asking archie couldn't be happier archie i think every day is just glad that he's not like still living in the woods and maya is living her best life maya's having the best time ever so all the cats are good [Music] my yeast is activated if i let it sit longer i know it would get super puffy and you'd see like little balloons of yeast activity but i'm gonna move on i have all my dry ingredients in the bowl i'm gonna pour in the scalded milk mixture which is now basically cooled and the yeast mixture so i'm turning this on and the dough hook is going to do everything it's going to bring it together so this has to go for quite a bit longer but i just want to take a chance now to scrape it down and make sure that there isn't any trapped flour at the bottom of the bowl whenever you have a wet dough like that this tool called a bowl scraper is really really convenient these cost literally one dollar it's a good investment so i'm going to let this go for at this point maybe six minutes eight to ten minutes total in the meantime i'm gonna take my bowl and i'm gonna generously oil it this is just vegetable oil so i drizzled it i'm gonna just sort of rub it around with my fingers so i'm oiling it because i don't want the dough to stick to the sides and as with most recipes made with active dry yeast we do two rises the first is gonna happen in this bowl then we sort of flatten it out and then it goes into the fridge for a second slow rise overnight this looks great so the dough is mostly pulling away from the sides and gathered up the hook it looks like a dough but when i stop the mixer will immediately kind of settle back down so again a really really wet dough but that is how you get some of those big air bubbles that produce our nooks and crannies which is the hallmark of a good english muppet so i'm going to scrape this down get rid of this hook [Music] okay so here's what the dough looks like still quite sticky but it has enough structure to sort of hold its shape somewhat and now this will go into our greased bowl for its first rise okay so scrape every last bit into that bowl you want to make sure that the dough is not stuck to the bowl anywhere it should kind of be able to move around the bowl without any anchor points so basically when you do this you shake the bowl it should move freely see how it's not sticking anywhere so now this is going to rise i'm going to cover it and that yeast will produce gas the whole thing will double in volume and you'll be able to see visibly that the dough has lots of big air bubbles in it so i'm going to cover this put it in a room temperature or slightly warm spot and this will rise while that's rising i'm going to prepare a baking sheet and this is how i'm going to refrigerate the dough overnight after its first rise so i have a baking sheet this is a half sheet use whatever rim baking sheet you've got a piece of parchment paper i'm going to generously oil the parchment very wet dough like this does have a tendency to stick so i'm oiling it and then one of the very classic things that you see with english muffins is a cornmeal dusting so here i have some this is like a medium ground cornmeal it doesn't matter what you use you can use whatever you've got and give the entire piece of parchment paper a generous dust this mostly prevents sticking but it also gives a little crunch and also a really classic look so that goes on one side and then i have just another piece of parchment paper right here now this gets laid down on top of the dough and again to prevent sticking i just want to oil this piece of parchment that's it and now we're just waiting for the dough to rise this has been going for a couple of hours but the dough has risen and doubled in size i recommend you use a slightly smaller bowl than i did because in a smaller bowl it's easier to gauge the growth of the dough but you can see that it has not only expanded in volume but if you look closely the surface has all sorts of little air bubbles that are visible okay so i took the bowl scraper and i just went around the sides of the dough to loosen it and now i'm going to basically let it kind of gently fall onto the baking sheet like so i want to pat this down into a single even layer and i'm going for something about a half inch thick so i'm using my hands and the dough which is oiled but if you feel like the dough is a little bit sticky you could put that parchment on top oiled side down and use the parchment to help smooth it out so this is kind of an easy clean way of working to press the dough out and now at this point i want to cover the baking sheet so i like to grab i got these great sheet tray covers so go ahead and slap a cover on it a piece of plastic whatever you want something airtight now this will go into the fridge and i will chill this for about 12 hours and while it's in the fridge the dough will kind of relax and also firm up and also puff up slightly this is a great opportunity for you to set it up the night before and then in the morning all you have to do is come in punch out your english muffins and griddle them i have one area where this will fit okay [Music] i love my new sheet tray covers because it means they don't have to use plastic and one of my goals for this year is not to use any single-use plastic in my kitchen whatever shape your slab is in you are going to cut out your english muffins one thing i'll do is sort of plan out like how i'm going to punch leaving a little tiny outline also you want to do this straight from the fridge the dough is much much easier to handle when it's cold so don't pull it out and let it come up to room temp one it'll be harder to handle and two it might overproof you want to press down firmly with the cutter straight down until you hit the baking sheet then give it a twist and as i cut i'm going to one by one move them from the baking sheet to my griddle griddle i'm using a skillet whatever you don't actually need to have a griddle hold on i'm not really nailing this okay so the griddle i don't have my skillet is not on it's cold which is fine can you use like a heart cutter or a tree cutter fun i never thought about using a cookie cutter for the shapes which is really fun especially if you have kids i don't see why not i would just not use a very intricately patterned cutter so like a snowman would be a great one or a star i guess but yeah try it but just make sure it's well oiled okay so here like i took some scraps and i just patting them together i've all my english muffins cut out half of them are already in the skillet i'm going to stick these back in the fridge just because it'll make it easier for transferring them to the skillet from the baking sheet you don't have to cover them they won't be in there that long so it's time to start cooking these i'm going to turn my heat on and i'm going to cook them on low a lot of recipes tell you to start on the stovetop in a skillet or a griddle and then you transfer them to the oven to finish cooking i didn't really feel like doing that i felt like it was so many moving parts so i want i wanted the recipe to be made entirely on the stovetop it just felt easier a little more streamlined and so in order to ensure that the center of the muffin fully cooks we cook them very very slowly and this also gives those air bubbles inside an opportunity to kind of slowly expand as the dough sets the skillet is dry i didn't add any additional grease there is already a little bit of oil on the dough and then of course the cornmeal so they don't stick at all so i'm going to very slowly cook these on the first side until the center is done the bottom is golden brown and then i'll turn them over and the second side goes much faster they go on this first side like five to seven minutes so just try to be patient let them sit there one thing i want to do is to like rotate the pan a little bit every couple minutes because even a cast iron skillet will get hot spots and that means uneven browning so you can rotate the skillet but don't touch the muffins they do not want to be touched at this point i looked at the clock before i started and then i forgot what time it was so now i don't know how long they've been going but i know that they are about ready to flip because several things one i can smell them they smell yeasty and delicious two the surface has gone from kind of shiny to more matte and that's how i know it's just like you're making pancakes same thing when you're making pancakes you'll see that change in the surface so i can even sort of touch them without sticking and of course they've puffed so i'm going to go ahead and start to flip them i suck at flipping things i don't know why i have like a thing where i can't do it so this is going to be a little dicey oh god i'm nervous okay wish me luck okay it's pretty good not terrible so this is the first side which is always the flat side because what happens is they go into the griddle they make a lot of contact with the pan and then as they cook they puff and so the second side becomes more rounded they mostly cook through on the first side and now that i flip them i just want to put some color on the second side so now i'm up to like medium low they need to cool and have some steam escape so they don't end up gummy in the middle they feel light for their size so that's another good indication that there are lots of nooks and crannies inside second side a little more rounded first side with cornmeal nice and brown i really like this one i like the height that it gets i like how nice and golden brown both sides are now let's talk about how you open an english muffin you do not slice you're not going to cut these you fork them open and i'll show you how to do that because that's how you expose the nooks and crannies i don't want a smooth cut through so i like to poke the times of the fork in that mid line all the way around hi maya and i should point out that this is warm not hot this has cooled for probably 10 minutes or so and now i'm going to open it up we have here the classic nook and cranny texture of an english muffin you can see there's a nook there's a cranny there's enough there's a crane you can see all sorts of different sized air bubbles and also the center is cooked it's not like a doughy mess i don't know the difference between a nook and a cranny is maybe there maybe it's the same maybe it's an oceanic granny i don't know [Music] so i was doing a recipe test a while ago and i made these candied kumquats which is sort of like a jam i'm going to give this a little taste first very kumquaty and delicious another breakfast sandwich i'm not going to taste it i know what it tastes like i'll leave it for you guys i'll cut it in half and show you i guess what i like about this recipe besides having that end result is that there's a lot of great learning here there's a scalding the milk trick there's making a really wet batter dough kind of thing to create nooks and crannies but ultimately it's really easy and and super forgiving and then at the end you have this really fun almost like a novelty but it's super delicious and very versatile so i think you should try it it's really fun you can set the whole thing up the night before there's going to be a lot more dessert person to come we're definitely gonna try to mix it up a little bit i always love showing you recipes from the book but there's a lot of other stuff that we're gonna do and play around with so thank you for watching tune in again and like and subscribe [Music]

Channel: Claire Saffitz x Dessert Person

Views: 779,280

Keywords: Claire Saffitz, Claire Saffitz Makes, Claire Saffitz Makes English Muffins, English Muffins, Easy English Muffins, Homemade English Muffins, English Muffin Recipe, Dessert, Dessert Person, Claire Saffitz Dessert Person, English Muffins From Scratch, Baking, Best English Muffins, How To Bake English Muffins, Bon Appetit, Gourmet Makes, How To Make Dough, Dough, Muffin, Muffins, McMuffin, Breakfast Sandwich, Classic English Muffins, Bake, Stovetop, Pastries, Pastry, Muffin Recipe, Claire

Id: 9YaXLdVW7uQ

Length: 19min 16sec (1156 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 15 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/DentateGyros]

The cold open is peak Claire

[u/Haunting_Way_816]

English muffin breakfast sandwich is a top tier food, the one she made at the end looks amazing. Will definitely try these. Also interested to see what this Cottagecore Claire sneak peek at the end turns into.

[u/moch1]

I thought they looked like fluffy pancakes until reading the title.

[u/Lokaji]

Could you freeze leftovers to preserve them even longer?

[u/fnord_happy]

Aww Felix

[u/Broken_Moon_Studios]

This looks godlike! :O

[u/BathTubNZ]

As great as they look, this is the first one where I was 'Ehhh that's a little too much work'. Enjoyed watching someone else make them though!

[u/Semper-Fido]

So her recipe at BA for these was absolutely mind-blowing. Has anyone made both and can compare?

[u/RyunWould]

I would die for her.