English Muffin Bread and Secret Recipe Club

For April’s Secret Recipe Club, where food bloggers are paired and reveal their partner (and what they prepared) on a designated day, I was assigned Lynne’s 365 Days of Baking and More. She started her blog with the sole purpose of baking for 365 consecutive days. Wow. Craig would love that. (Sorry, babe, it ain’t happenin’.) Lynn continued blogging beyond a year and although she does have an extensive list of all kinds of baked goods, she also has a variety of savory foodstuff as well.

Her English muffin bread, something on my culinary to-do list, caught my eye. Craig eats a Trader Joe’s British muffin every day, and as of late, even though we don’t eat a lot of bread, any thing with yeast is of interest because of the challenge it presents. So baking this was an easy decision. Because I have limited bread baking experience, I cut Lynne’s recipe in half to make one loaf, and I substituted white whole wheat flour for half of the all purpose, and I had to add a quarter cup more water to get the dough smooth. One of her comments suggested increasing the baking soda to get the nooks and crannies typically found in commercial English muffins, which I also did. The recipe below reflects the changes I made.

The result? Success. I even surprised myself how tasty it turned out, and it’s very simple to make. I’m pretty excited to find something else on Lynne’s blog to continue boosting my baking confidence.

English Muffin Bread

Butter and cornmeal
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour, divided

1 1/2 cups white whole wheat flour, divided
2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast
1/2 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 cups milk
1/4  - 1/2 cup water

Prepare an 8 1/2 x 4 1/2-inch loaf pan by greasing it with butter and cover with cornmeal; set aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, mix together half the flours, yeast, sugar, salt and baking soda.

In a small saucepan over low, heat the milk and water to very warm, between 120 - 130 degrees F. Add to the flour mixture and thoroughly combine. Gradually add the remaining flour. Place the dough in the prepared loaf pan.

Cover the pan with a towel and place in a draft-free, warm spot to rise for 1 1/2 hours. (I heated the oven to 170 degrees F. and then turned it off and placed the pan in the oven to rise.)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

Place pan in the oven and bake for 25 minutes. Immediately remove loaf from the pan and place on a wire rack to cool.

It turns out English muffin bread is tasty more than just for breakfast. Craig used it for garlic cheese bread, and it was perfect.