Homemade English Muffins Complete with Nooks and Crannies

For so long I had searched for a good English muffin recipe. Well, this may baffle you as everyone knows tons of English muffin recipes are just a Google search away. But here's the thing: I am very picky about my English muffins.

As one clichéd saying goes: if you don't stand for something, you fall for everything. To apply this to a recipe search, unless you know exactly what you look for (taste, appearance, texture, etc.), any recipe that does not produce catastrophic results seems good to you. And that's fine. In the end, an ideal recipe is one that gives you what you want.


When it comes to English muffins, boy, do I know what I want. I don't ask for much; I only need two things. I need spongy texture, and heavens know, I need my nooks and crannies. This is the reason why my search for a perfect recipe had been such a long process. I could not find one recipe that yielded these two things. When I found a web or cookbook recipe for English muffins, first thing I looked for was the pictureof the finished product. Dense, fine, bready texture with no nooks and crannies? I packed up and moved on.


To me -- and you may not agree -- the spongy texture and the nooks and crannies are the sine qua non characteristics of English muffins. Without them, you have nothing but English muffin-shaped rolls. The same thing goes for bagels. Without the definitive bagel "chewiness," you're left with donut-shaped rolls. Good Ciabatta and Focaccia, in my bigoted opinion, need to have crusty exteriors and open texture on the inside; otherwise they're just regular bread that happens to be flat.

With several disappointing recipes behind me, my sense of discernment had become sharper. In fact, lately, I could just scan an English muffin recipe and know right away whether it would be worth trying. For example, when I came across a recipe that told me to shape the dough into balls, flatten them with my hands, and dust them with cornmeal, I immediately moved on. I had gone through too many of those. None of such recipes had worked for me. They may produce the kind of English muffins that suit the taste of the recipe author, but not mine.

The only recipes that had come anywhere close to my ideal English muffins all involved a soft and wet dough and I mean, very wet and very soft. Yet even those few good ones fell short in one way or another.

When I came across Alton Brown's English muffin recipe, right away I had a feeling this could be "it."


When I read the recipe and saw that the dough would be so soft that you would have to scoop it into the muffin rings with an ice cream scooper, I almost jumped up on my kitchen counter and yodeled with joy.

But oh, the results ... And here's another thing which makes this recipe stands out above the rest: it works consistently.

If you're into nooks and crannies, this recipe is it.

You can find the recipe for Alton Brown's English muffins here. The procedure is simple enough and the only special equipment you need is the English muffin rings which aren't that difficult to find these days and can easily be substituted with tuna cans with both ends removed.

For those who prefer measuring dry ingredients by weight and liquids by volume, here's a converted version of AB's recipe:

English Muffins
Adapted from Alton Brown
Downloadable Version

Mixture #1:
36g nonfat milk powder
14g sugar
2g salt
14g melted shortening or vegetable oil (Use something flavorless.)
8 fl. oz. (1 cup/236 cc) hot water

Mixture #2:
7g dry yeast
A pinch of sugar
2.7 fl. oz. (1/3 cup/78 cc) lukewarm water

250g all-purpose flour
2g of salt

Mix the ingredients listed under Mixture # together in one bowl; stir until the sugar is fully dissolved and let it cool down to lukewarm.

Mix together the ingredients listed under Mixture #2 in another bowl and let it rest until the yeast has dissolved.

Add Mixture #2 to the bowl containing Mixture #1 and mix well.

Add the flour to the wet mixture and beat vigorously with a wooden spoon. Cover the bowl and let it rest in a warm spot for 30 minutes.

Set a nonstick pancake griddle over medium-low heat; coat it lightly with vegetable oil spray.

Add the other 2 grams of salt and 1 teaspoon of baking soda (see notes below) to the batter and mix thoroughly.

Place English muffin rings on the griddle and coat the insides with vegetable oil spray.

Fill each muffin ring about 3/4 full; cover with a cookie sheet (see notes below) and cook for 5-6 minutes

Remove the cookie sheet and flip the muffins over with a pair of tongs. Cover with a cookie sheet and cook for another 5-6 minutes or until golden brown.

Remove the muffins from the griddle, rings and all.

Carefully remove the rings and let the muffins cool completely before splitting them.

My Notes:

I have made two batches (28 batches as of 8-17-10) using Brown's recipe. For the first batch, I followed his procedure exactly and got very good results. However, for the second batch (shown here), I decided to experiment with adding 1 teaspoon of baking soda to create the bubbling effect in the dough (per some other good recipes that I had tried) just before it went on the griddle. This method yields even more pronounced nooks and crannies. In fact, from now on, I think I will add baking soda to my dough every time.

Brown suggests that you use an electric griddle and set the temperature at 300° F. But I used my pancake griddle and set it on medium-low heat -- I would say a couple of notches above your lowest setting.

Be sure to grease the bottom of the cookie sheet which is to be placed on top of the filled muffin rings. You want to keep the dough inside the muffin rings, not underneath the cookie sheet after it has been removed.

Let the muffins cool completely before splitting them.

(Note added March 22nd, 2010: After 6 months of trials and errors, I have perfected English muffin loaf, i.e. a loaf of bread that has spongy texture and open crumbs almost like English muffins baked on the stovetop in English muffin rings. This English Muffin Bread with Lots of Nooks and Crannies is phenomenal.