Whole Wheat English Muffins

There are two breakfast items that remind me of my childhood: popovers and english muffins. Both because my mom loved them and would make them for us. Well, she would make the popovers at least. Usually we would get store bough english muffins. The kind with the english guy with a cane on the packaging.

In my adulthood, I have attempted to make both. And for some reason, I have mostly failed. A few months ago I attempted popovers with the popover pans I got for my wedding. I had high hopes, but when I took them out of the oven, I saw that they did not "pop over". They looked like little muffins. They aren't quite as good as little muffins.

Yesterday I made my first attempt at english muffins. I wanted to make whole wheat english muffins to keep with my healthy eating goal. However, while they were edible, and I would consider them more of a success than the popovers, I did have to throw away half of them. I'll get to that...

Whole Wheat English Muffins
From Mother Earth News

1 cup warmed milk
2 Tbs. honey
1 package active dry yeast
1 cup warm water
1/4 cup melted butter
5 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp. salt

Combine warmed milk and honey in the bowl of a stand mixer and stir until dissolved. Dissolve the yeast in the warm water in a separate bowl and let stand for 10 minutes. Add the yeast mixture, butter, and 3 cups of flower to the milk mixture. Beat at a low speed with a dough hook. I got to use the kitchenaid mixer my mom gave to me about a month ago. It was her old one, and apparently about as old as I am, but it still works great!

Add flour by the half cup until dough forms. You've put enough flour in when the dough pulls into a ball and cleans the side of the bowl. Move dough to a greased mixing bowl and let stand for an hour.

Sprinkle a long sheet of wax paper with cornmeal. Punch down the dough, and then cut the dough into 12 pieces. Roll each piece into a ball, place on the wax paper, then slighly flatten them and sprinkle cornmeal on top. Cover and let stand for another 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 350 Degress and heat a greased griddle over MEDIUM heat. Place on griddle and cook about 5-7 minutes, until golden brown.

I stress the medium heat because here is where I went wrong last time. I apparently did not have enough coffee the morning I made these, and missed the medium heat part. I heated the griddle at high heat. After a few minutes the muffins were smoking. They were burnt to a crisp on one side. I ended up throwing those muffins away, and cooking the rest, all of which came out slightly burnt but still ok.

Once you're done with the muffins on the skillet, place them on a baking sheet and bake for 5 minutes.

Even though the muffins came out slightly burnt, they still made pretty good breakfast sandwiches.

Here's hoping you all have better luck.