English Muffins

Published: 28/04/2017Updated: 09/07/2024

9 Reviews

2h 35m

2h 30m

Serves 8

Easy

About our English muffins recipe

Recreate that restaurant-experience brunch at home with our English Muffins recipe. Perfect for eggs benedict, or just toasted with hot butter, practiced bakers can make our fresh English Muffins with Allinson white dough in six steps. Breakfast fans will also love our Wholemeal Bagels, made with Allinson wholemeal dough.

What makes English muffins different from bread?

As you'll see from our recipe, the English muffin is yeast-risen, and bears little resemblance to its American counterpart, the muffin, which is known as a “quick bread” since it uses baking soda instead of yeast. English muffins are similar to English crumpets, which is spongier and has holes, but is closer in resemblance.

7 ingredients7 steps

Method

Step 1
MIX

Mix the flour, yeast, sugar and salt in a big bowl. Using your fingertips rub in the butter until only fine ‘crumbs’ are left. Mix in the water with a cutlery knife.
Step 2
KNEAD Tip onto a lightly flour dusted surface and knead for 10 minutes (or use the dough hook attachment on your mixer).
Step 3
RISE

Lightly grease the mixing bowl with some oil. Put the dough back in, cover the bowl with a clean tea towel and leave to rise until doubled in size – about 1 hour depending on how warm your kitchen is.
Step 4
SHAPE

Knock back the dough by gently kneading just 5 times to get the air out. Dust the work surface with some semolina. Roll out the dough to 1.5cm thick, then cut out as many muffins as you can with a 8-9cm cookie cutter. Dust some baking sheets with more semolina and lift on the muffins with space to grow. Dust the tops with some more semolina.
Step 5
PROVE

Cover the dough again with a clean tea towel and leave to prove until puffed – about 20 minutes.
Step 6
BAKE

Heat a heavy-based frying pan or hot plate over a low-medium heat. Cook the muffins in batches for 4-5 minutes on each side until golden. Cool on a wire rack.
Step 7
A little grated cheese kneaded into the dough before rolling and stamping makes a lovely addition.

Ingredients

MetricImperial

For the Dough
- 500gAllinson's Strong White Bread Flour
- 7gAllinson's Easy Bake Yeast
- 1.5 tspBillington's Unrefined Golden Caster Sugar
- 1.5 tspSalt
- 1 tbspUnsalted butter (softened)
- 300mlWarm water
Plus
- 150gSemolina (Fine)

Baking tray
Mixing bowl

9 Baker Ratings

13 Aug 2023

Lovely muffin recipe - better than shop bought.
At step 4, I don’t dust the work surface with semolina to avoid this getting mixed in with the dough when I re-roll the left over dough.
I put my semolina in a bowl then dip and cover my muffins prior to putting on the baking tray to prove again as in Step 5
At Step 6, I cook in batches of 3 at a time for 4/5 minutes each side. I think maybe other people have cooked for a total of 4/5 mins in total which would leave the centre of the muffin ‘doughy’.
Depending on how many muffins are cut out will depend on total cook time
Each muffin or batch will take 8-10 mins.
I have usually managed about 12 muffins with this recipe.
I also always use olive oil instead of butter (as with bread making too - same ingredients)
It’s worth trying as the muffins are better than shop bought, so easy to make, light and soft inside. You’ll never buy shop bought again.

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1 baker loved this!

24 Mar 2021

Comes out lovely! Only thing is I rolled it to 1.5cm thick pre proving and I found then too thick to cook properly. I flattened them down whilst cooking and that worked a bit better. I always toast before eating so that cooks a little bit too. Can't wait to try them again and use the recipe with cheese!

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