Vegan English Muffins

You can get vegan English muffins easily enough in most supermarkets, but it is fun to learn to make your own which, with practise, will be far better than those sitting in packets on the supermarket shelf.

The good news is that they are not difficult to make at all. If you’ve made any kind of dough from scratch, then you’ve got these in the bag. Like all dough, they take a little time to do, the majority of which is proving time, so you can binge watch some Netflix (or alphabetise you book collection) while you’re waiting.

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Prep time: 15 minutes, plus proving time. Cooking time: about 20 minutes.

Makes 4

Ingredients:

300g strong white bread flour

75g gram (chickpea) flour

2 tsp dried yeast

1 tsp salt

180ml plant-based milk

A little oil for greasing

30-50g coarse semolina flour (for dusting)

This recipe is available as a class on Richard Church’s Vegan Cook School. Click here to find out more

Method:

Put the flours, yeast and salt into a mixing bowl and combine. Pour in the milk and mix with a table knife until large lumps form. Now use your hands to bring all the dough into a ball. Empty out onto a work surface and knead for 5-8 minutes, until you have a smooth elastic dough.

Grease the dough with the oil, place in a clean bowl, cover with a tea towel and leave in a warm place to prove for about 1-1½ hours, until it has doubled in size.

Bring back to the work surface and knock all of the air out by kneading again for a minute. Lightly flour the surface with the bread flour and roll the dough out to about 1½ cm (just over ½ inch) thick. Use a 9cm circular pastry cutter to cut out 4 rounds in the dough (you will need to re-roll it to get all 4).

Now take a baking tray and sprinkle some of the semolina flour onto it. Toss the dough rounds in the semolina flour to coat all around, then cover with the towel again and prove for another 30 minutes or so, until they are about the size they will be when finished cooking.

Preheat the oven to gas 6/200C/400F and heat a dry skillet or heavy-based frying pan on the stove.

Gently place the proved muffins into the hot skillet, being careful not to knock the air out of them, and cook on a medium heat for about 4 minutes each side, or until the tops and bottoms of the bread are nicely browned. Transfer back to the baking tray and finish off in the oven for 10 minutes, to make sure they are cooked through.

Once done, dust with a little more semolina flour and allow to cool before serving.