Lily’s Blog, Dragon Absconded!
Baking Until I Drop

I’ve never really made bread before, I don’t think.
Well, I’ve put things in the bread machine and let it do its stuff.
I’ve made pizza dough.

I love bread.
I love sandwiches.
I love our sandwich press.

Chennette said if I don’t want all my awesome sandwiches to look the same and I want to take pictures of them, then maybe I should start making my own bread…different kinds of bread.

Well, I haven’t actually started…or not because of that. I always *intend* to…but you know about intentions!

Mom and I, because of the food crisis, have been making our own bread. Whenever she sees flour she buys it…is that hoarding? Well it’s not hoarding if we use it. It’s cheaper to make our own bread than buy it…and we eat less of it when we make it because…well it’s more filling?

So this time, I decided to make English Muffins. I didn’t realize how easy it was going to be. But also, I didn’t take pictures until after they’d risen. We have two essential cookbooks from who knows when. Betty Crocker’s Cooky book and Betty Crocker’s Breads. They’re an integral part of my childhood. At least the cookie book. I used to stare longingly at the cookie house and used to drop hints for someone to make it for me. I dreamed of making it. Well, I still haven’t but oh well. Maybe one day. The bread book was there…I flipped through it…loved the big colour pictures and knew mom used it. So, I used the recipe from the bread book.

Of course, I cleaned 4 of our cluttered drawers some months ago (it’s the prelude to sorting through the entire kitchen) and threw away the rusty cookie cutters.

So, I used one of our blue plastic sterilite cups (usually used to drink coke or some other sugary concoction in front of the niece). It worked really well. It was probably more like 3 inches and not the 3 1/2 the recipe said. But I think it was a good size.

English Muffins

• 1 package yeast (I don’t know what active and dry and inactive and all that means)
• 1 cup warm water
• 2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1/4 cup shortening (cookeen - i melted…well softened it for 5-10 seconds in the microwave to make it mixable)
• 3 cups flour (i used baker’s flour)
• cornmeal for dusting etc

1. Dissolve yeast in water
2. Add salt, sugar, shortening and flour and stir it until it’s smooth
3. Roll it out until it’s about 1/4 inch thick
4. Cut into 3 1/2 inch circles (I did 3 inch)
5. Keep rolling and cutting until you’re done
6. Place on an ungreased sheet with cornmeal on it. Then sprinkle more cornmeal on top of them
7. Cover and leave to rise for about an hour
8. Heat a skillet or griddle (375F?)
9. Cook about 5-7 minutes on each side

They say it makes around 10-12 muffins. I made 17 3-inch muffins…a couple were smaller than the others.

And you can see how it passed the fork test!

There’s a couple more pictures in the Flickr set.

PS They only cost TT$12.50 to make (that doesn’t include labour and profit…hehe) which is just under US$2.00