Sprung

No matter your personal spirituality, spring is the time when we start gathering together again. Shorts appear and shirts get less turtlenecky and more spaghettistrappy. Flowers peak out and mask the smell of uncleaned winter dog poop. Sometimes there’s a little bit of pollen-caused misery. Hopefully the renewal and joy of spring hasn’t been replaced by the gloom of home isolation. Hopefully you can get out and do something you like. My renewal ritual was trying something I hadn’t before. It was nice. Ironically, it was a three-day process and the bread did in fact rise on the third day.

English Muffins (credit Chad Robertson and Tartine)

Poolish:

200g AP flour

200g water

3g instant yeast

Levain:

220g AP flour

220g water

30g mature starter

Dough:

400g poolish

400g levain

600g AP flour

400g bread flour

30g salt

500g water

Day 1

Mix the poolish and levain. Cover with cling film and leave the poolish in the fridge overnight and the levain on the counter overnight. 1 hour before you’re ready to mix the dough, take the poolish out. Right before mixing, take a small teaspoon full of each and put it in a bowl with room temp water. If they float, they’re ready. If not, give them an hour or two. If one is ready and the other isn’t it no biggie. It’s not going to not work later.

Day 2

Mix the dough in a big ass bowl. Put the mixed dough in a large square container (at least 1 gal), cover and leave on the counter for bulk fermentation for somewhere between three and four hours. Give the dough a turn every hour or so. After the third turn check it every 20 minutes. One it touches the top of the container its ready. Line a quarter sheet hotel pan with a couche or lint-free towel, making sure there’s some overhang. Dust with a ton of rice flour. Pour out the dough onto the couche, dust with more rice flour and flatten out to the edges. The dough should be almost an inch thick uniformly. Cover with another towel and put it in the fridge overnight.

Day 3

Take out the dough about 30min before its time to cook. Melt about half a stick of butter and strain it through something to remove the large solids. Heat the pans to about medium. Make sure it’s hot enough that the butter sizzles but doesn’t burn immediately. Cast iron can be tricky. Cut the dough with something about 3 inches across, like a cup measure or a cookie cutter. You can use a knife if you want. You can also use a pizza cutter if you don’t want circular muffins, but are you really that kind of savage? After cutting, brush the pan with your strained butter and put in three or four muffins, just don’t crowd the pan. Cook until the bottoms are browned. They'll puff up substantially and may

look cattywompus. Its fine, they'll even out. Flip and cook the other side. Just remember that cooking times and burner temps will vary as is the nature of cast iron.

I had scraps so I fried them and dusted with sanding sugar. Its like zeppoli, except English.