The Art of Griddling English Muffins: A Step-by-Step Guide

English muffins are a category of baked goods that get griddled and then finished baking in the oven. They are delicate, puffy, and require gentle handling to avoid damaging them or tearing any air bubbles. To start cooking them, I use two metal spatulas to carefully lift and transfer the English muffins from one pan to another, taking care not to touch the dough directly.

The griddle is a crucial tool in this process, with its low sides and large surface area making it easy to cook multiple English muffins at once. A cast-iron griddle with both flat and ridged sides is ideal for cooking pancakes and English muffins alike. I preheat the griddle over medium heat, using just enough oil to prevent sticking. Once the griddle is hot, I add a small amount of cornmeal to help create a crispy crust on the bottom.

As the English muffins cook, they begin to take on a slightly golden color and develop a subtle crunch around the edges. It's essential to keep an eye on them, as they can quickly go from golden brown to burnt. I use two spatulas to carefully flip the English muffins, taking care not to over-flip or break them.

To finish baking the English muffins in the oven, I transfer them to a preheated baking sheet lined with parchment paper. This helps prevent them from cooling too quickly and allows for even browning. With both batches cooked and cooled slightly, it's time to split the English muffins open and reveal their soft, pillowy interior.

The key to opening English muffins lies in using two forks rather than a knife. By gently pricking through the surface of the muffin with one fork, I can create a controlled crack that allows me to slice through the bubbles without tearing the muffin. As I work around the perimeter of each English muffin, I apply gentle pressure with my second fork to separate it into two halves.

The end result is nothing short of impressive – perfectly toasted, crunchy English muffins that are teeming with steam and aroma. Served warm, they're a delight to eat, whether topped with melted butter, jam, or even something more adventurous like eggs and cheese. Whether you're making them for yourself or for guests, griddling English muffins is an art that's sure to impress.

In the kitchen, there's often a sense of theater involved in preparing a meal – and griddling English muffins is no exception. The process itself is a meditative one, requiring patience and attention to detail as I carefully coax each muffin into its perfect golden brown state. And when it's all done, the end result is a treat that's both delicious and visually appealing.

While some may think that griddling English muffins is an insurmountable challenge, the truth is that it's not as difficult as you might imagine. With practice and patience, anyone can master this simple yet elegant process. So go ahead – give it a try!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enknow how describe English muffinz they're sort of pillowy I'm very puffy soft light and Plex crunchy texture on the outside all of those nooks and crannies super delicious all right this is a really fun recipe I'm going to show you how to make English muffins they're not something you can only buy at the store it is a fun recipe to make at home and I will show you a good do ahead so that you can try it for your next brunch party so I have all my ingredients here this is a yeasted recipe so we start with 1 packet of active dry yeast so the first thing we want to do with active dry yeast always is proof it that just means we want to make sure the yeast is alive even with recipes where it's not sweet this is not a sweet recipe I'd like to add even a little bit of sugar because it does enhance flavor and it also makes for better browning so a cup of warm water basically active dry yeast our yeast granules that are coated in a dehydrated shell and the warm water just dissolves that shell and activates the yeast so we'll wait for that to get foamy so I can start while my yeast is proofing I can start by combining all these ingredients so buttermilk if you don't have buttermilk you can just use regular milk but I love the flavor and tenderness that you get by using buttermilk 2 teaspoon salt 2 tablespoons oil you don't want like clumps of butter in there so if you need to you can zap it in the microwave on low power for 10 seconds at a time just keep an eye on it so it doesn't melt and then our three and a half cups of bread flour and I have the dough hook on my mixer this is a very wet dough so when I was testing the recipe I kept adding moisture because one of the hallmarks of a good English muffin is all of those nooks and crannies and one of the ways that you get those larger air bubbles in it is to increase the moisture in the dough and that goes okay we really just let the mixer do all the work here so that'll come together I started unload just so I don't like spray flour all over the counter so I want at the end it is a wet dough so it will be a little bit sticky but I want a Jo that's very very smooth and supple so at the moment it's formed sort of a shaggy dough and a lot of the flour is incorporated so I can increase this speed and if I need to well scrape down those sides okay so after a few minutes on high speed in the mixer the dough started out very very sticky but now it is starting to pull away from the sides of the bowl so I'm gonna just clean down the sides a little bit so while that's finishing up off the parable so I think the dough is ready it's clearing the sides and this just goes into this bowl using a large bowls of the the dough has room to rise okay then a little bit of plastic over top now this goes into the fridge for what we call an overnight proof now the dough itself is warm because we added all the liquid the buttermilk in the water were warm so this will actually proof in the fridge but you know as it cools down it will also kind of tighten up and make it easier to form the individual English muffins because it is such a sticky Joe okay we have our dough that rested overnight in the refrigerator it did gain some and volumes you can see that if I take off the plastic so there's that before we portion it out I want to ready our two sheet trays so when you use after dry yeast usually you do two Rises so for the second rise we do after we form the English muffins and they're gonna rise on these sheets so just to give them plenty of room to rise I'll do six per sheet and you know when you see like the English muffins in the store it has that very distinctive cornmeal kind of coating on it so we're gonna use cornmeal to dust the sheets and I'm also going to dust them on top so I'll keep this nearby okay now I'm going to portion the dough out into 12 equal pieces you can see where those air bubbles of are that it the yeast did its job and it started to aerate the dough okay so for 12 I'll do in half once in half again to make quarters and then I'll do each quarter into three pieces here I want to be gentle I don't want to de gas the dough too much because what I'm looking for are those big air bubbles so for each piece I'm gonna do kind of a quick forming method where I basically stretch the gluten around the surface of the dough so that I have a nice sort of tight ball and really that just means kind of taking the edges and bringing them into the center like that so I have these little kind of tight packages that's more or less in a circle but that's really the only operation you need to do if you want to make them make sure they're really really round and perfect you can kind of almost like you're forming dinner rolls have this sort of tightening action by sliding the ball across the counter and then transfer it seem side down to the cornmeal there we go so I'm kind of stretching it out into kind of a rough square and then pulling all of those edges into the center and then flipping it over okay so once you have six to a sheet you can take a little bit of this excess cornmeal and dust the top so the plastic doesn't stick so these are gonna proof again and I'm gonna let them swell until they are almost doubled in size they'll get very very puffy so now just quickly going back to the other half of the dough this the quicker you can kind of work that dough the better because fast hands you know it like sticks less okay so this is the last one okay so that just kind of gently drapes over and now these guys are just gonna hang out and then it's time to cook them okay it's been 80 minutes and these have proof really nicely they are definitely around doubled in size if I shake the tray you can see they're clearly air filled because they have a little bit of that jiggle so now I'm ready to start cooking them so English muffins are in a category of baked goods that get griddled and then I'm going to transfer them to the oven so they can finish baking so here I have a girl that's over two burners that's on low they're very delicate because they're so puffy so I just don't want to damage them too much or tear anything or pop any air bubbles so I'm gonna use two metal spatulas and I'm gonna try to get actually underneath the cornmeal so that I'm not actually touching any of the dough and that it makes it a pretty easy transition and there's no grease on the griddle at all so one of the things I'm looking for is I can obviously just lift up with a spatula and peek underneath but I'll see the dough start to take on sort of a more matte consistency around the edges it's still a little bit shiny on top you could do this if you have a big cast-iron skillet but a griddle is easier because if it has those lower sides and obviously a much bigger area so it's just a more convenient way to cook more of them at once but a cast-iron griddle is a great tool to have often they come with one side as a grill pan with the ridges and then the other side flat so it's useful to have if you make a lot of pancakes or if you make a lot of English muffins all right so these are starting to turn a little bit golden I like you know I want it to be a dark golden brown not certainly not burnt but I wanted to take on a nice amount of color the color also happens quickly though so once you see it's starting to turn a little bit golden keep an eye on it don't walk away because it'll go from golden to burn pretty quickly okay I'm gonna flip this I like the way that the bottom looks so just give it up I'm really bad at flipping stuff I this is why I don't make pancakes at home I'm a terrible flipper I don't know why so I'm just gonna do my best I've been told that it's the wrist action there we go Aibileen being left-handed I don't know what that has to do with it so as they finish on the second side I'll transfer them into the oven I have a baking sheet in there that's already preheating so they'll go directly onto a hot sheet tray so they don't cool down too much and now I'll just wipe down this griddle get all of the cornmeal off and I'll start again with the second pan okay so my first batch has been in the oven five minutes on the low side and the first one it's been about seven so they're all should be about baked through and now while these cool I'll transfer the second batch to the oven but in the meantime these guys can go on this wire rack so now we just want to wait for these to cool a little bit for some of the steam to escape they're really nice warm though so they don't have to cool all the way and as they cool you'll see that they'll start to settle a little bit and they'll get that kind of telltale waste we call it around the sides and then I'll show you how to open them which is a very important process I don't want to use a knife what to use two forks okay so this is the second batch which are done the first batch has been cooling for a few minutes when you pick them up you can really feel how light they are they sort of pillowy and they have this sort of crunchy side okay so I'm going to show you how to split them to eat them there's a key technique and that's using two forks so you fork them open rather than using a knife and I've just kind of like slices through all the bubbles and so you don't get such an irregular nothing cranny kind of texture so I just put it on its side and go in along that waist and then use a second fork to pull it apart and then just work around the perimeter this more tear is it rather than slices it so you get better texture to hold the sort of melted butter and jam okay there you have it all 12 English muffins I love this recipe it's so much fun it's sort of like theater if you have people over be very impressed with you griddling the English muffins and really making something that I think a lot of people thought could only be store-bought and they are so much more delicious than the kind you get in the supermarket so thanks for watching hmm super delicious oh it's not anything oh it's not that hard it's not that easyknow how describe English muffinz they're sort of pillowy I'm very puffy soft light and Plex crunchy texture on the outside all of those nooks and crannies super delicious all right this is a really fun recipe I'm going to show you how to make English muffins they're not something you can only buy at the store it is a fun recipe to make at home and I will show you a good do ahead so that you can try it for your next brunch party so I have all my ingredients here this is a yeasted recipe so we start with 1 packet of active dry yeast so the first thing we want to do with active dry yeast always is proof it that just means we want to make sure the yeast is alive even with recipes where it's not sweet this is not a sweet recipe I'd like to add even a little bit of sugar because it does enhance flavor and it also makes for better browning so a cup of warm water basically active dry yeast our yeast granules that are coated in a dehydrated shell and the warm water just dissolves that shell and activates the yeast so we'll wait for that to get foamy so I can start while my yeast is proofing I can start by combining all these ingredients so buttermilk if you don't have buttermilk you can just use regular milk but I love the flavor and tenderness that you get by using buttermilk 2 teaspoon salt 2 tablespoons oil you don't want like clumps of butter in there so if you need to you can zap it in the microwave on low power for 10 seconds at a time just keep an eye on it so it doesn't melt and then our three and a half cups of bread flour and I have the dough hook on my mixer this is a very wet dough so when I was testing the recipe I kept adding moisture because one of the hallmarks of a good English muffin is all of those nooks and crannies and one of the ways that you get those larger air bubbles in it is to increase the moisture in the dough and that goes okay we really just let the mixer do all the work here so that'll come together I started unload just so I don't like spray flour all over the counter so I want at the end it is a wet dough so it will be a little bit sticky but I want a Jo that's very very smooth and supple so at the moment it's formed sort of a shaggy dough and a lot of the flour is incorporated so I can increase this speed and if I need to well scrape down those sides okay so after a few minutes on high speed in the mixer the dough started out very very sticky but now it is starting to pull away from the sides of the bowl so I'm gonna just clean down the sides a little bit so while that's finishing up off the parable so I think the dough is ready it's clearing the sides and this just goes into this bowl using a large bowls of the the dough has room to rise okay then a little bit of plastic over top now this goes into the fridge for what we call an overnight proof now the dough itself is warm because we added all the liquid the buttermilk in the water were warm so this will actually proof in the fridge but you know as it cools down it will also kind of tighten up and make it easier to form the individual English muffins because it is such a sticky Joe okay we have our dough that rested overnight in the refrigerator it did gain some and volumes you can see that if I take off the plastic so there's that before we portion it out I want to ready our two sheet trays so when you use after dry yeast usually you do two Rises so for the second rise we do after we form the English muffins and they're gonna rise on these sheets so just to give them plenty of room to rise I'll do six per sheet and you know when you see like the English muffins in the store it has that very distinctive cornmeal kind of coating on it so we're gonna use cornmeal to dust the sheets and I'm also going to dust them on top so I'll keep this nearby okay now I'm going to portion the dough out into 12 equal pieces you can see where those air bubbles of are that it the yeast did its job and it started to aerate the dough okay so for 12 I'll do in half once in half again to make quarters and then I'll do each quarter into three pieces here I want to be gentle I don't want to de gas the dough too much because what I'm looking for are those big air bubbles so for each piece I'm gonna do kind of a quick forming method where I basically stretch the gluten around the surface of the dough so that I have a nice sort of tight ball and really that just means kind of taking the edges and bringing them into the center like that so I have these little kind of tight packages that's more or less in a circle but that's really the only operation you need to do if you want to make them make sure they're really really round and perfect you can kind of almost like you're forming dinner rolls have this sort of tightening action by sliding the ball across the counter and then transfer it seem side down to the cornmeal there we go so I'm kind of stretching it out into kind of a rough square and then pulling all of those edges into the center and then flipping it over okay so once you have six to a sheet you can take a little bit of this excess cornmeal and dust the top so the plastic doesn't stick so these are gonna proof again and I'm gonna let them swell until they are almost doubled in size they'll get very very puffy so now just quickly going back to the other half of the dough this the quicker you can kind of work that dough the better because fast hands you know it like sticks less okay so this is the last one okay so that just kind of gently drapes over and now these guys are just gonna hang out and then it's time to cook them okay it's been 80 minutes and these have proof really nicely they are definitely around doubled in size if I shake the tray you can see they're clearly air filled because they have a little bit of that jiggle so now I'm ready to start cooking them so English muffins are in a category of baked goods that get griddled and then I'm going to transfer them to the oven so they can finish baking so here I have a girl that's over two burners that's on low they're very delicate because they're so puffy so I just don't want to damage them too much or tear anything or pop any air bubbles so I'm gonna use two metal spatulas and I'm gonna try to get actually underneath the cornmeal so that I'm not actually touching any of the dough and that it makes it a pretty easy transition and there's no grease on the griddle at all so one of the things I'm looking for is I can obviously just lift up with a spatula and peek underneath but I'll see the dough start to take on sort of a more matte consistency around the edges it's still a little bit shiny on top you could do this if you have a big cast-iron skillet but a griddle is easier because if it has those lower sides and obviously a much bigger area so it's just a more convenient way to cook more of them at once but a cast-iron griddle is a great tool to have often they come with one side as a grill pan with the ridges and then the other side flat so it's useful to have if you make a lot of pancakes or if you make a lot of English muffins all right so these are starting to turn a little bit golden I like you know I want it to be a dark golden brown not certainly not burnt but I wanted to take on a nice amount of color the color also happens quickly though so once you see it's starting to turn a little bit golden keep an eye on it don't walk away because it'll go from golden to burn pretty quickly okay I'm gonna flip this I like the way that the bottom looks so just give it up I'm really bad at flipping stuff I this is why I don't make pancakes at home I'm a terrible flipper I don't know why so I'm just gonna do my best I've been told that it's the wrist action there we go Aibileen being left-handed I don't know what that has to do with it so as they finish on the second side I'll transfer them into the oven I have a baking sheet in there that's already preheating so they'll go directly onto a hot sheet tray so they don't cool down too much and now I'll just wipe down this griddle get all of the cornmeal off and I'll start again with the second pan okay so my first batch has been in the oven five minutes on the low side and the first one it's been about seven so they're all should be about baked through and now while these cool I'll transfer the second batch to the oven but in the meantime these guys can go on this wire rack so now we just want to wait for these to cool a little bit for some of the steam to escape they're really nice warm though so they don't have to cool all the way and as they cool you'll see that they'll start to settle a little bit and they'll get that kind of telltale waste we call it around the sides and then I'll show you how to open them which is a very important process I don't want to use a knife what to use two forks okay so this is the second batch which are done the first batch has been cooling for a few minutes when you pick them up you can really feel how light they are they sort of pillowy and they have this sort of crunchy side okay so I'm going to show you how to split them to eat them there's a key technique and that's using two forks so you fork them open rather than using a knife and I've just kind of like slices through all the bubbles and so you don't get such an irregular nothing cranny kind of texture so I just put it on its side and go in along that waist and then use a second fork to pull it apart and then just work around the perimeter this more tear is it rather than slices it so you get better texture to hold the sort of melted butter and jam okay there you have it all 12 English muffins I love this recipe it's so much fun it's sort of like theater if you have people over be very impressed with you griddling the English muffins and really making something that I think a lot of people thought could only be store-bought and they are so much more delicious than the kind you get in the supermarket so thanks for watching hmm super delicious oh it's not anything oh it's not that hard it's not that easy\n"