The Baker's Dozen: English Muffins in a Loaf

 

The Baker's Dozen: English Muffins in a Loaf

This week wasn't a fail, in terms of making and baking the bread, I would say, but it was a fail in terms of flavor. I was really excited to try this recipe out, because I love English muffins and thought it sounded like a fun and unique concept to have it in a bread loaf shape instead of their traditional shape. But it was just bland and boring when I tasted it. I won't be sharing the recipe, as I don't think the result was good enough to make again. I will taste it one more time tomorrow after it's had a lot of time to set up flavor-wise, but I might not even finish the loaf. It's just blah and boring. I was really disappointed, sadly. I will share the pictures and explain what I did.

The obligatory ingredient picture. Not much goes into this. The recipe calls for salt in the instructions, but it it not listed in the ingredient list, so I had to guess. Because the recipe also made two loaves and I only wanted to make half, I cut it all in half, which worked out fine. I just guestimated on the salt and added a pinch. Apparently it wasn't enough.

The buttered pan dusted with cornmeal.

Here is the first half of the dry ingredients mixed with the liquid.

And this is what the dough looks like after adding the rest of the flour. It's a nice dough. You don't knead it a lot.

I had to sort of press it and stretch it out a bit to fit it in the pan properly before setting it aside to rise.

Here it is after it's risen. Another unique element to this is that it only calls for one rise. I thought that might make it more like English muffins, but it made it super dense without much texture.

It got nice coloring. Called for 25 minutes, and that's what it needed.

A side shot after removing it from the pan.

And here is what it looks like from the inside. You can see there's just no definition. English muffins have some holes in them, and this has none. Probably because of the single rise. It toasted ok in the toaster, but it just was disappointingly boring, overall.

Oh well, they can't all be winners, I guess! And I learned something: yeast breads definitely need a second rise. And English muffins are probably best in their traditional form. They're shaped like that for a reason, clearly! Hopefully next week will be a success...!