Breads from Around the World, Episode 2 - England

Episode 2 - England(?) - English Muffin

Contrary to popular belief, the English muffin wasn't invented by McDonald's. Contrary to another popular belief, the English muffin wasn't invented in England! Ok, that part may or may not be true. While doing some research on this topic before writing up this post (but after having baked them), I learned that there's a lot of dispute on where the English muffin came from. Some claim that it was invented by a British immigrant to the US (you know, the iconic Thomas's English muffins) in the late 1800's. Some claim that it was in England few hundred years ago, where the song "The Muffin Man" also came about. Are English muffins really English? Is Mongolian beef actually Mongolian? What's the deal with French toast? In the age of fake news and how you can't trust anything you read on the internet, I'm not sure what's the actual truth. But since this blog is about breads from around the world, I'm going to believe that it's indeed actually from England.

I used the recipe from King Arthur's website. They came out really good. They have a slight crusty exterior, and a soft chewiness of the interior, with the classic 'nooks and crannies'. The hardest part was trying to shape them into a nice round shape with even thickness. Another hard part was grilling them on the pan. Since my pan isn't so large, I had to bake them into 4 different batches, and finish the rest on the oven. 

I would like to revisit this with a sourdough starter and whole wheat flour. And also, I'd like to put crumpets on the list for a future episode, as this bread seems to be more popular in England than English muffins.

Breads from Around the World, Episode 1 - Morocco

Introducing my new blog series: Breads from Around the World.  Each episode, I will attempt to bake bread from far away places, and share my results with you.

Episode 1 - Morocco - Khobz

When I was visiting Morocco, besides getting scammed, I would see this bread served at every meal. For breakfast, it would accompany the fresh fruits and yogurt with jam and honey, or for dinner, it would ride alongside a tagine clay pot. It can be eaten plain, or with your favorite spread, or dipped in sauces and soups.

It's a simple bread. Jony Ive would probably describe it as unassuming. Unpretentious .Simple, yet elegant.

Apparently in Morocco, there are communal ovens, where people can prep the dough and take them to a communal oven (faraan) to be baked.

Here is a youtube video of one in action:

Some more interesting bits about faraans from this article:

Somehow, with dozens of loaves on the floor of his oven, the baker always knows whose bread is whose. But just in case he forgets, most people make an identifying mark on their dough.

“My housekeeper put a special stamp on the bread made out of iron with a design, a sort of family mark on it,” Ms. Wolfert said. “She didn’t sleep well unless there was a sack of wheat in the house to make bread.”

I saw several recipes online, and I opted to go with this recipe, mainly because it called for a significantly less amount of dry yeast, and noted the specific temperature of the water for mixing into the dough. Coming from a sourdough background, I could appreciate this attention to detail. I wasn't sure if my dry yeast was still good, so I added a tablespoon of my sourdough starter that was sitting in the fridge. I also added some toasted sesame seeds on top. The result turned out really nice. Crusty exterior with soft, chewy interior. It went well with marinated steak, stir fried veggies, and yogurt!

Stay tuned for the next episode of Breads from Around the World!