The time arrived for my bubbly Levain to make its debut appearance. We went to work, following, exactly, the Thomas Keller Bouchon Bakery recipe for English Muffins. Chef Husband worked to build a “Steam Generator” for the bottom of the oven (a pan full of rocks and chain that you squirt water onto to create steam inside the oven). I weighed by grams and mixed the ingredients, progressing through the stages of preparing the dough, which took about 2 hours overall. Then we had to get creative and develop a proofing box, which turned out to be just two full size commercial sheet pans, one inverted over the other.
The only deviation to the recipe was that our silicone molds were not a standard English Muffin sized cylinder (they’re on their way though from Amazon). We substituted a silicone mini muffin pan for our molds. Chef Husband prepped the molds with oil and cornmeal, and filled them half full with the dough. After proofing for 30 minutes in between the two sheet pans, into the hot/steaming oven they finally went to bake for exactly 20 minutes. Once they came out, it was a no-touch policy, until they cooled completely.
Finally, tonight was the moment of truth, time to slice one open. We had started with bubbly Levain, our home made wild yeast starter, and in the end we had an equally airy (baby) English Muffin.
Perfect little air pockets!
Until next time…
Culinarily Yours,
Mrs. Chef (Christa)
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Tiny Bubbles
Tiny Bubbles
