English muffins are popular round, flat smaller breads, usually eaten for breakfast and brunches with sweet or savoury toppings. Despite their name, they are actually an American invention (first made by an English immigrant), but are now commonly eaten especially in Canada, Australia and UK as well. The word „English“ is simply used to distinguish them from plain muffins, which are larger and sweeter. Funnily though, in the UK they are called „muffins“ and the larger sweeter muffins are called „American muffins“. In Germany they are called “Toastbrötchen” and are easy to get in supermarkets, but they just taste so much better when you make them at home. We love them because they can be used to prepare many different dishes, from a simple and quick breakfast or brunch, to tasty burgers, small pizzas, sandwiches for road trips and more. Get our recipe and more toppings ideas in this post and try it out for yourselves.
Surely, there are different recipes about how to prepare English muffins. Here, I´m sharing how we like to make them, so this is our recipe. The recipe is for 8 buns (or less if you make them larger), which are then cut in half and topped as desired.
INGREDIENTS
- 145g lukewarm water
- 6g sugar
- 4g dry yeast
- 150g Greek yoghurt
- 360g wheat flour
- 1 egg white
- 6g salt
PREPARATION
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mix water, sugar, dry yeast and leave it to rest for 2 min
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add Greek yoghurt, flour, salt, egg white and knead until it becomes elastic
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let it rest on room temperature for 1 hour so that it doubles its size
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cut the dough in 8 equally large pieces and make little balls with your hands
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leave them for 1 hour until they double their size
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take a flat pan and heat them (no extra fat needed in the pan) on both sides until they are slightly burned on the top & bottom
TIPS & IDEAS
Freshly made English muffins can be eaten immediately or frozen for later. If you want to freeze them, it is good to cut them in half horizontally first, so that when you take them out of the freezer you can put them directly in the toaster or oven and heat them up.
ENGLISH MUFFINS FOR BREAKFAST
English muffins are mostly eaten in the mornings. Charlie loves them with salty butter and black coffee and my favourite would be a butter, smoked salmon and a poached egg on the top. Other savoury toppings ingredients can be ham, bacon, prosciutto, fried or scrambled eggs, cheese, tomatoes and other. For those who prefer a sweet start of the day, choose jams and marmalade, nutella, bananas and berries, honey and butter for example.
MINI PIZZA ENGLISH MUFFINS
This is a very practical solution for a quick meal or snack, also convenient if you have guests arriving in the last minute. Of course only if you have pre-made English muffins stored in the freezer. Just take them out and top them with anything you have in the fridge and you think might fit. The easiest would be a slice of ham, some cheese, tomatoes and some fresh herbs for garnish. Shove them in the oven until the toppings are crispy.
OPEN-FACED ENGLISH MUFFINS
Similar to the breakfast versions, except these ones are richer and can be made for lunch or a proper filling snack. We make them hot, kind of like an opened burger. Here´s one we made just recently, with panko fried chicken, guacamole and egg, but you can of course make any kind. Either with salmon or white fish, shrimps or vegetarian with lots of veggies.
ENGLISH MUFFINS BURGERS
Last but not least, burgers! Yes we often use English muffins to make tasty home made burgers. They can be with either meat or fish patty or simply vegetarian. There are so many possibilities, so just be creative and use your imagination. Also, these burgers will probably be smaller than the usual burger buns so they also work good as party finger food, especially if you make different ones.
We hope you got some new ideas and will try out our English muffin recipe at home – in case you have some questions feel free to drop us a message in the comments below.
