English muffins were always our saviour, a safe breakfast or bun option that was mostly readily available. Sadly over time , the safe brands have all started to add milk to their ingredients and now all of the easily available ones contain milk. Sad days for us, as it is yet another product we can no longer depend on being able to buy. I also find it a bizarre time for companies to start adding milk to the ingredients when there is an increasing interest in dairy-free and vegan is the new big thing!
So it was time to either miss out or start making them myself, and I obviously went for the making them myself option. I just can’t stop baking and cooking! It’s not the same, and ideally it’s nice to have some products we can buy, but needs must.
I have to say they’re pretty easy to make, the results are shop worthy and they freeze beautifully, so maybe we can return to the days to always having English muffins on hand.
English Muffins
(dairy-free, egg-free, nut-free, soya-free, sesame-free, vegetarian and vegan)
makes 8-10 muffins
400g plain flour
1 tbsp fast-action dried yeast
1 tsp salt
1 and 1/2 tbsp caster sugar
100ml dairy-free milk
25ml sunflower oil
125-150ml water
polenta for dusting, plus a little more flour
- Place the flour, yeast, salt and sugar in a bowl.
- Pour in the oil, milk and 125ml water. Mix to form a dough adding the extra 25ml water if needed.
- Knead until smooth, bouncy and silky. About 10 minutes by hand, 5 minutes by machine.
- Place into a bowl, cover and leave to rise for at least an hour. You want the mixture to have basically doubled in size.
- Knock back. Dust the kitchen surface with flour and polenta and roll out to a thickness of about 2 cm. Cut out circles using a cutter any size from 8 -12 cm.
- Rest on a floured/polenta covered board whilst you heat the pan.
- Heat a heavy bottomed frying pan on low until it has an even heat, this will take a good 5-10 minutes.
- Cook the muffins until golden on each side and no longer doughy in the middle which will take up to 10 minutes on each side.
- Store in an airtight container or freeze once cool for extra freshness,
