Easy Homemade English Muffins

July heat that you can see — heat that makes the air shimmer over the gravel road and the metal roof of the workshop sing in the afternoon. The kind of heat where you do all the outside work before noon and all the inside work after, and the middle of the day is for sitting on the porch with a glass of cold tea and thinking about what dinner needs to be, which on days like this is something cold or something simple or both.

Tomato week. The first big tomatoes came in over the weekend — the Cherokee Purples that Hannah saves seed from every year, and a German Pink that I started from a seed packet for the first time, and a row of Romas for canning. Tomato sandwiches Monday for lunch. Bean bread, fresh tomato thick-sliced, salt, a smear of mayo, one leaf of basil from the garden. Eaten on the porch with my feet on the railing. Hannah ate hers in the kitchen because Hannah eats lunch in the kitchen, and that's a small geographical division we've had for thirty-four years that has never resolved itself and never will.

Canning starts. Twelve quarts of crushed tomatoes Tuesday. The jars went into the bath at three o'clock and came out at four-thirty, and the kitchen was a hundred degrees and the air conditioner was losing the fight, and the seal-pings as the jars cooled were the sound of August arriving, six days early. By August's end I expect to have eighty quarts of tomatoes on the shelf — sauce, crushed, whole, juice — and that gets us through the year for soups and chili and the long cooks of winter.

Wednesday I drove to Tahlequah for a tribal meeting at the cultural center. They're asking about another welding project — repairs to the iron gate at the older cemetery on the east side, which has been listing for years and needs to come off and get re-leveled and re-anchored. I said yes. The center director said the budget is limited. I said the budget is fine. I don't charge full market for tribal jobs. I never have. I made the pergola for them six years ago at cost, and the cemetery gate is the kind of work that's for the dead more than the living, and I don't price the work the dead need.

River and Lucia came down Saturday to do another round of soil sampling. They've been doing this every six to eight weeks, building a year-long dataset. Lucia is meticulous in a way that River is not — she's the one with the field notebook and the labeling system and the phone with the GPS app. River is the one who knows the property and where the right spots are to sample. They're a good pair. I said this to Hannah and Hannah said yes, they're a couple, and I said I know they're a couple, and Hannah said no, I don't mean dating, I mean a couple — a unit, the way me and you are a unit. I sat with that for a minute. River is twenty-five. I had married Hannah at twenty-four. The math, when you do it that way, lines up too well to ignore. I said: do they know yet? Hannah said: of course they don't know yet. They're twenty-five.

The bean bread Hannah makes is hers — her recipe, her hands, her timing — and I’m not going to try to put that down here. But the tomato sandwich idea, the logic of it, the simplicity of good bread under a thick-sliced Cherokee Purple with salt and one leaf of basil, that I can offer something toward. These English muffins are what I’ve made on the weeks when Hannah hasn’t had time for a batch of bread and the tomatoes won’t wait. They’re not bean bread, but they’re honest — they hold up, they don’t compete, and they come together in a morning without turning the kitchen into a second canning project.

Prep Time: 20 minutes + 1 hour rise | Cook Time: 20 minutes | Total Time: 1 hour 40 minutes | Servings: 10 muffins

Ingredients

3 cups all-purpose flour, divided, plus more for dusting
2 1/4 teaspoons (1 packet) active dry yeast
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup warm whole milk (about 110°F)
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1 large egg, room temperature
Cornmeal, for dusting the surface and pan
Neutral oil or butter, for greasing

Instructions

Proof the yeast. In a large bowl, combine warm milk, sugar, and yeast. Stir gently and let sit 5–10 minutes until foamy. If it doesn’t foam, your yeast is not active — start again with a fresh packet.
Build the dough. Add the softened butter and egg to the yeast mixture and stir to combine. Add 2 1/2 cups of the flour and the salt, mixing until a shaggy dough forms. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 6–8 minutes, adding the remaining flour a little at a time, until the dough is smooth, soft, and slightly tacky but not sticky.
First rise. Shape the dough into a ball and place in a lightly oiled bowl, turning once to coat. Cover with a clean kitchen towel and let rise in a warm spot for 1 hour, or until doubled in size.
Shape the muffins. Punch down the dough and turn it out onto a surface dusted generously with cornmeal. Pat or roll to about 1/2-inch thickness. Cut into rounds using a 3-inch biscuit cutter or the rim of a glass. Re-roll scraps once. Dust both sides of each round with cornmeal and place on a cornmeal-dusted baking sheet. Cover loosely and rest 15 minutes.
Cook on the griddle. Heat a cast iron skillet or griddle over medium-low heat. Lightly grease with butter or a neutral oil. Cook the muffins in batches, 5–6 minutes per side, until deep golden brown on each face and cooked through. Adjust heat as needed — too high and the outside browns before the inside sets. The muffins should feel firm when pressed.
Cool and fork-split. Transfer to a wire rack and let cool at least 10 minutes before splitting. Always use a fork to split — run the tines around the equator to tear rather than cut, which opens up the nooks and crannies that hold butter, mayo, or whatever a thick tomato slice is going to need.

Nutrition (per serving)

Easy Homemade English Muffins — The Bread Beneath a Perfect July Tomato