OUR SIGNATURE
English Muffins with Liz’s Kumquat and Rosemary Marmalade
Our Liz is many things: an advocate, a leader, a whizz at business operations, a hospitality curator and now a Luminary trustee. She arrived on the scene when Luminary was only a few months old and has been one of our biggest ‘cheerleaders’ since. The combination of our English muffins with her Kumquat and Rosemary Marmalade perfectly sums up how she makes our world that much sweeter.
MAKES 12 MUFFINS
210ml water
210ml buttermilk
1 × 7g sachet of fast-action dried yeast
1 tbsp (12g) caster sugar
25ml vegetable oil, plus extra for greasing
115g unsalted butter, softened
500g strong white flour
2 tsp (10g) fine salt
fine cornmeal, for dusting
Heat the water and buttermilk in a small saucepan until lukewarm (the same temperature as your finger and no hotter). Stir in the yeast and sugar and set aside for 10 minutes. After that time, stir in the oil and butter in chunks.
In a large bowl, mix the flour and salt. Make a well in the middle, add the liquids and bring together into a sticky dough.
Knead the dough on a clean work surface for 10 minutes, using a bench scraper to keep the surface clean and avoiding dusting it with additional flour (extra flour will give you hard and tough muffins). It’ll be very sticky so try slapping it on the work surface and folding it over repeatedly, to keep it from covering every inch of the surface. Alternatively, you can use an electric mixer fitted with a dough hook to do all the messy kneading for you.
Place the dough back into the bowl and cover with clingfilm or a damp tea towel. Leave it to prove somewhere warm for 30 minutes. After this time, transfer the bowl to the fridge and prove for a further 1 hour until the dough has doubled in size.
Line 2 large baking trays with baking paper and dust with a thin layer of cornmeal.
Oil your work surface, tip the dough out onto it and cut the dough into 12 equal pieces (about 90g each). Flatten each piece into a 5cm circle and fold the outside edges into the centre, pinching them together. Turn the balls upside down (so the ugly pinched bit is on the bottom and the top is nice and smooth) and place on the baking trays. Dust the muffin tops with a little extra cornmeal and loosely cover both trays with oiled clingfilm. Leave to prove at room temperature for another 45–60 minutes until doubled in size.
Preheat the oven to 160°C/140°C fan/Gas Mark 3, preheat a large frying pan over a low heat and place a third, unlined baking tray in the oven to heat up.
Carefully transfer 3–4 muffins upside down into the hot pan, using a couple of fish slices or spatulas to lift them so that they maintain their shape. Cook for 10 minutes until they have golden brown bottoms, then flip each muffin and cook for a further 5–6 minutes. Patience is everything here – let the muffins slowly brown and cook through or you’ll have raw middles.
Transfer the cooked muffins to the baking tray in the hot oven and bake for a further 10 minutes. Once cooked, they’ll spring back to the touch and feel light.
Leave to cool for 15 minutes before slicing open and serving with salted butter and your new favourite condiment… (see the recipe overleaf).
TIP
If you can’t find buttermilk, you can substitute it for a mixture of 140g natural yoghurt and 70g whole milk.
