Why did “pantry cooking” ever become associated with deprivation? There are lots of wonderful foods you can make from simple pantry ingredients: these English muffins are a fine example.
If you have flour, yeast, salt, and water – and a little cornmeal or semolina flour – you can make delicious English muffins. They’re almost as easy as pancakes: you stir up a batter the night before, then cook them off in the morning. That doesn’t seem too hard, does it?
Helpful equipment: a set of muffin rings (which can be recycled tuna cans, well washed) You can do without, though – you’ll just have muffins that are charmingly not-quite-round. They’ll still taste wonderful.
It’s the overnight rise that gives these muffins the characteristic not-quite-sour English muffin taste. The batter will rise, then might collapse on itself (technical term: over proofed). That’s nothing to worry about, because it’ll just make the muffins taste even better.
Stir up a batch soon. I’d tell you the muffins keep well, but seriously, that’s never been a problem for us. At our house, the entire batch will be gone before 2pm.
