Giving It Some English

 

A bit of a detour from our normal work here. A few months back, a slow circulator-cooked egg was added to the menu. While the dish was being developed, it was decided that we come up with an English muffin-esque toast to accompany the egg. At any given time, we provide a handful of various doughs, tuiles, chips, and bases for the savory side of the kitchen. Truth be told, we're not always excited about this stuff, yet we manage to easily absorb the extra work with little hassle. The English muffin, however, was actually fun to develop, and months later, I still enjoy making them. Perhaps it’s that part of me that will always miss my first love, bread.

 

 

   
 

In addition to adapting the traditional to restaurant production, the real challenge came on two fronts: in order to produce a long, thin slice that could be toasted for the egg dish, we had to first make a rectangular-shaped muffin, and second, the crumb- or nooks and crannies, if you will- had to be a bit tighter than the classic, in order to get a clean look. The conventional English muffin is wrought from a fairly loose dough, nearly a batter. The griddling then takes place within rings to contain the dough, the looseness of it partially contributing that wonderful open and irregular crumb.

 

 

   
  

Surprisingly, we nailed down both our recipe and method quite quickly. The dough was just tight enough to manipulate, and the texture and flavor was achieved by utilizing a fair amount of dry milk in the formula. The result gave us a familiar look and flavor of an English muffin, though in a form that we could tailor to our specific use.

 

 

 

The funny thing is, not having had too many English muffins over the years, I now crave them, and must have them in the house at all times. Store-bought, of course. Who knows, there may be some bagel-making experiments in my future, too.

 

 

Download: English Muffin- Workbook.3.10.09

 

A side note on the low-temp egg. Earlier this year, I collaborated with Dr. Cesar Vega, a food scientist at Mars, on an intense presentation covering many of modern cooking’s ‘greatest hits’. The centerpiece of Cesar’s demo was his extensive research on an egg’s texture in relation to its cooking time and temperature. Using common textural analogies, his goal has been to create a tool that chefs could use to pinpoint specific, predictable results- and debunking the myth that time doesn't really matter, even at a constant temperature. He also presented this ongoing project in May at the Experimental Cuisine Collective's daylong symposium here in NYC. I know a lot of us are looking forward to the eventual published work! Cesar also introduced me to the fun egg cooking calculator created by some folks in Oslo, which has since been linked to by Martin and others.

 

 

Comments

[Vicente Echeverria]

sorry. i just couldn't help it....
http://www.amazon.com/Norpro-Egg-Rite-Timer/dp/B00004UE75/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1254557001&sr=8-2

[Larry P.]

I wonder if an english muffin is indentifiable as english muffin if taken completely out of it's normal habitat? I don't mean different shapes. I'm thinking things like: If the toasted english muffin were pureed with a little water or something, would it still taste like an english muffin or would it be just a generic toasted bread flavor? If it were rolled thin and grilled would it taste like a thin english muffin or just a generic flatbread? What if the dough was a little more fluid and cooked in a waffle iron, would it taste like an english muffin waffle? I can't decide if I would recognize english muffin without the usual texture. Maybe I'll mix up a batch of your dough and find out.

[Jeremy]

You pricked up my ears and I am going to try this with sourdough and some buttermilk powder!