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Hi Bold Bakers!
Sourdough is a really big trend right now, people are making their own starters at home
and fermenting their doughs.
My no-knead method is very, very similarly to sourdough you get a really bubbly texture,
great salty flavor in your bread and a really nice crust.
However, for my no-knead method you don't need a starter.
It’s really easy to make.
I am gonna show you how you can make no-knead English muffins.
As always the recipe can be found on BiggerBolderBaking.com and make sure you head over to my website
because all of my no-knead recipes are on there.
So you wanna start out in a nice big bowl because you need to give your dough room to
grow.
Into here I'm gonna add in my flour.
Add a little bit of salt on one side of the bowl, and give it a mix.
Then add your instant yeast on the other side of the bowl and give that a mix.
So let me just clarify why I do this we add the salt on one side of the bowl, give it
a little mix with the rest of the flour, add the yeast on the other side, give it a little
mix, and then you can mix them all together that’s totally fine but when you're making
this do not add the salt directly on top of the yeast or it will kill it.
Okay lovely, that's our dry ingredients, I'm gonna set this over to the side and we’re
gonna mix together our wet ingredients.
So into a separate jug we’re gonna add in some milk, water, and a little bit of butter.
So now what you want to do is just pop this into the microwave you can also do it in a
little saucepan, just until the milk gets kind of warm and the butter melts you don't
want to get this too hot.
So this took less than a minute my butter is just melted and my milk is slightly warm
so that’s exactly what I'm going for I don't want it too hot.
We're gonna add our wet into our dry but here's the thing when you're making any of my breads
any of my pastries anything like that kind of dough based, don't add in all of the liquid
so I'm gonna add in 3/4 of it and then I'm going to start to mix.
So here's the reason why we hold back a little of the liquid and why I get messages from
people saying that their dough was too wet.
What happens is that flour all over the world even in different counties, states, whatever
is different and absorbs liquid differently so for everybody to get the same results I
want you to hold back a little bit of liquid, give it a mix, and then like I can see mine
now is a little bit dry so I'm gonna add in a little bit more of my reserved liquid, bring
it together, until it forms a kind of a sticky dough like this it’s not too wet and it’s
not too firm.
This is perfect.
Honestly if you just gauge it like that hold back your little bit of liquid and then mix
it until it just forms your ball, you're golden and that applies to all my breads and pastries.
So here's the beauty about no-knead recipes: you don't need a stand mixer you just do it
all by hand all of my recipes for pretzels brioche bread whatever it is you mix them
all by hand so it’s a really, really simple dough to make.
This one is looking great, so I'm gonna cover it in cling wrap.
And lay over a tea towel.
So here's our next step, fermenting the dough this is what gives you all the characteristics
of a sourdough all the bubbles all of that kind of boozy flavor the texture this is my
favorite part because you really start to see the bread take shape.
I like to ferment my dough for a minimum of 18 hours, leave it at room temperature somewhere
nice and warm not too hot and let it just do its thing.
People always ask how do English muffins get that lovely texture and all that bubbles,
the fermenting is what gives it that texture.
Bubbles and gas forms they create big lovely pockets and the gluten traps it into your
English muffin so you have these lovely big holes all over I absolutely love them.
So after 18 hours your dough should look like this.
Risen up almost doubled in size and really bubbly on top.
So carefully turn your dough out onto a floured surface.
I adore the smell of these kind of doughs it’s just like salty and boozy and really
delicious.
So I'm just gonna sprinkle a little bit of flour over my dough, then I'm gonna pop over
my tea towel and just let this sit for 10 minutes and let that gluten relax so afterwards
we can roll it out.
So our dough’s been chilling for a few minutes now with my nice clean hand I'm just going
to pat it down, because the dough is really lovely and soft, until it’s around a centimeter
thick.
So now to cut them out I'm gonna use my scone cutter this is 3” it’s a nice good size,
and then just go ahead and carefully cut out your English muffins.
Then once they're cut, lay them on a prepared baking tray.
These are looking really good with any leftover scraps of dough you can kind of “mushell”
it together like so, press it down and you can keep on getting more English muffins.
So all in all this recipe will make you around 10.
Literally always when making bread dough and things like that you always get one little
last guy who's kind of knobbly and doesn't look as good but will taste great so we’ll
pop him on there too.
So now what we have to do is let the English muffins rise at room temperature so what you
want to do is lay over a piece of cling wrap.
Now the reason that we do this nice and tight is because dough doesn't like to get air on
it if it gets air it gets a skin it doesn't like it so you want to make sure that your
cling wrap is covering all of your little English muffins.
And then, cover that with a tea towel just to get it nice and snug in there.
We are gonna leave these to rise for around 45 minutes or so.
So it’s been roughly around 45 minutes or so, and these guys have puffed up nicely they've
kind of rounded their edges which means they're ready to be cooked off.
So over here I have a nice big nonstick frying pan, I love this guy nice heavy bottomed frying
pan will do really well, so very carefully I'm going to lift up my English muffins and
gently place them on my frying pan.
You don't need any oil or any butter just put them directly on your nonstick frying
pan.
Now here's my secret that not a lot of chefs do but it works wonders, I'm gonna put on
a lid, and what this does it kind of encases them and it will actually steam your bread
as well as frying it so it'll rise and then get a lovely grill on the one side.
So on the first side they're going to take around 5 minutes or so to cook before we flip
them over.
So it’s been a few minutes I'm just gonna lift off the lid, and gently peak underneath
to see if one is ready.
So they're lovely and golden brown this is a great time to flip them over also because
they've puffed up nicely.
So once you flip them all over they take less time to cook on this side so you're talking
in and around maybe 3, 3 1/2 minutes, and you just want to get them nice and brown like
the other side.
One thing you can do at this stage you can leave off the lid.
They really take no time to cook at all I'm cooking them off in two batches because don't
want to overcrowd your pan just give them a little bit of space so they can grow and
get nice and bubbly.
I don't need to tell you that English muffins are really lovely when they're fresh off the
pan and they're still nice and warm so I'm just gonna cut this guy open.
As you can see it’s still steaming.
Now look at all those bubbles on the inside we created those with the fermentation process,
all those bubbles forming over time this is exactly the kind of English muffin that you
want.
Now there's only one more thing for me to do, butter it and eat it.
There's not a whole lot better than freshly made bread, with butter straight from the
pan.
This is absolutely divine, it’s got that kind of a little bit of a boozy salty flavor
from the fermenting, all those bubbles in all the little nooks and crannies that the
butter got into, this is heaven.
Head over to my website right now where you can find this no-knead recipe and lots more
for pizza, pretzels, brioche, loads of lovely things.
I’ll see you back here really soon for more Bigger Bolder Baking.