Food Storage Friday: English Muffins

Do you ever see a recipe and decide to make it right then? That's what happened when I saw an english muffin recipe at The Happy Housewife. I love english muffins and started them mere seconds after reading the recipe. They were delicious, so naturally I thought that I ought to see if I could make them food storage friendly. So I did, and here they are.


And just because they are made with only non perishables, didn't stop me from slathering the freshly baked ones with loads butter.




Ingredients: Flour, powdered milk, water, honey, oil, salt, yeast and cornmeal. When 70% of the food is in nontraditional packaging, you know it's food storage.




Start off by adding your powdered milk to a mixing bowl. When you reconstitute powdered milk you add 1/3 cup of powdered milk to 8 oz or one cup of water. Perfect measurements right? Well, when you only need 1/2 cup of milk you can still do 1/2 cup of water but you have to eyeball the powdered milk because, unfortunately for me, I don't have a 1/6 measuring cup. Oh, how I wished I did if only for the sake of food storage.



Add the water to reconstitute the milk, as well as the water called for in the recipe.



Add the salt



and the honey and mix together.



Now add half the flour



and the yeast



and mix again until it looks like pancake batter. I did this all by hand by the way.



See? Pancake batter.



Now cover and let rise for one hour.



When you come back, the dough should look like this, all bubbly and hopefully bigger.




Now add the oil, I used canola oil.



And the rest of the flour. The first time I made these, I used half white flour and half whole wheat, and they were delicious. This time I used all white flour, and they were still delicious. It's a win-win situation.



Mix together, if you aren't using a mixer, you may have to get your hands dirty a little bit to combine the dough.



Sprinkle a clean surface with cornmeal




And roll out the dough



Dip a cup or cookie cutter into flour to keep it from sticking to the dough



Princesses are very big at our house and coincidentally are perfect size for making english muffins.



Cut out the english muffins, and when you've cut out as many as you can out of one rolling, gather up the leftover dough and roll out again to cut out more muffins.



And place them on a sheet of wax paper. Place them cornmeal side down (not like I did) and then they won't stick to the wax paper.



I can't remember from making these how many the recipe turns out, but it looks like from this picture there are 18.



Cover with a clean dishtowel and let rise for another hour.



They should look like this, nice and puffy.



Heat a griddle over medium high heat and drizzle with a little oil to make a nonstick surface.



Grill your english muffins on each side. You'll have to watch your first batch carefully to determine what your optimum cooking time is. You want them to be browned on each side and it's okay to taste test one to make sure its done in the middle.



Hello, beautiful. You can actually pull this apart with your hands, just like the store bought ones, no knife necessary.



Eat straight off the griddle, or toast to have with your breakfast in the morning. They are delicious any way you try them!





English Muffins
adapted from The Happy Housewife

1 cup hot water
1/2 cup prepared powdered milk or 1/2 cup water and half of 1/3 cup powdered milk
2 tsp honey
2 tsp salt
4 cups flour (you can use 1/2 white 1/2 whole wheat)
2 tsp instant yeast
2 Tbsp oil
Cornmeal

Add water, powdered milk (and water for powdered milk), honey and salt to a mixing bowl. Combine. Add 2 cups of flour and yeast and stir until combined. Cover with a clean towel and allow to rise for one hour. Add remaining 2 cups of flour and oil and stir until well combined. Roll out onto a cornmeal covered surface and using a cookie cutter or cup, cut out round shapes. Let cut muffins rise, covered, for another hour. Heat a griddle to medium high heat and grease with a little oil. Grill muffins on both sides until lightly brown and cooked in the middle. Eat!