The Great Bloggers Bake Off - English Muffins

The Great British Bake Off may be over but The Great Bloggers Bake Off isn't. We are continuing with our baking for as long as we can so please feel free to continue joining in.

This week Mary Berry & Paul Hollywood are showing us how to make some of the bakes from the show (and more) during their Masterclasses. Tonight saw a whole orange cake, Olive breadsticks, Angel food cake, chocolate cake and English muffins. The breadsticks looked amazing and I will definitely be making some of those very soon.

We are opening up the linky once again and encouraging bakers to link up their Bake Off Masterclass inspired bakes. They can be a bake shown in one of the bakes or previous shows that you didn't get around to trying out during the series. The linky will be open until the end of November to give everyone a chance to include as many bakes as they like - please only include bakes that have been featured in this series of the show and masterclasses.

I have never made English Muffins before & seeing other people make them in week 2 of the bake off made me really want to try them even more, but as I was on holiday that week I never got around to it.

I used Paul Hollywood's recipe but as you can see from the pictures, rolling the dough out to 2.5cm thick was NOT a good idea as they rose into monster muffins and ended up being too thick to cook fully on the griddle. In the end I cooked them on each side on the griddle and then popped them in the oven for an extra 20 minutes or so on very low to finish cooking in the middle.  I think 1.5cm will be a sufficient thickness for next time.

We ate the muffins toasted with cheese and ham for lunch in the car on the way to see my parents on Sunday afternoon, and they were delicious!

English Muffins - makes 8

300g Strong white bread flour

6g dried yeast

6g salt

15g Caster sugar

15g Stork 

1 egg, beaten

approx 170ml milk

Semolina for dusting

• Add the flour, yeast, salt, sugar, Stork, egg and milk together to form a soft dough, adding more milk if necessary
• Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and knead for approx 10 minutes
• Put the dough into a greased bowl and cover with clingfilm and leave in a warm place for approx 1 hour, until doubled in size
• Lightly dust the work surface with semolina and flour
• Roll the dough out - I would say to approx 1.5cm, Mr H says 2.5 but what does he know, hey! (see above)
• Using a round pastry / cookie cutter cut out circles and lay on a baking sheet dusted with more semolina
• Sprinkle more semolina over the tops and leave to prove for 30 minutes
• Preheat a flat griddle pan over a low heat and griddle the muffins for approx 10 minutes on each side, or until cooked through 

rising into monster muffins

some of the neater, more muffin like muffins

the rest of the doughnut looking muffins

I was sent some Stork to use in my Great Bloggers Bake Off bakes, a versatile butter alternative