Warm the milk slightly in the microwave, just enough so it’s warm to the touch, NOT hot.
You want to encourage your yeast to loll around and get fat in there, not die a fiery death. :)

Add sugar and yeast to the warm milk and mix.

Add the eggs, olive oil and salt. Mix.

Add about 5 cups of your flour and start mixing it. Just like with all the other bread recipes we’ve tried, you want the dough to be soft and cleaning the sides of your bowl, before you stop adding flour. Continue adding flour 1/2 cup at a time and mixing until your reach the desired consistency for your dough. It took the whole 7 cups for me, because of all the humidity we have had around here, lately.

Once your dough is the desired consistency, knead for 8-10 minutes by hand or about 6 minutes in your mixer.

Put dough in a lightly greased bowl and cover with a warm damp tea towel. Let rise until doubled in size.

Cover your work surface with a light dusting of cornmeal. I went a little too heavy at first and had to take some off. Then lay your dough out on the cornmeal and pat it into a rectangular shape about 1/2 inch thick. (You could roll it with a rolling pin, if you wanted.)

A regular-sized biscuit cutter was going to be too small, so I grabbed a drinking glass from the cupboard and it was the perfect size for cutting the English muffins. By doubling the original recipe and using the large glass, I was able to get 18 good-sized muffins, so I was pleased with the yield.

Once your muffins are cut. Let them rest and rise for 15-20 minutes (not quite doubled in size). This is the step where I had a lot to learn. Don’t let these rise too high or they are difficult to cook through. I had to “deflate” a couple of them, (by just pressing them down a little), that had gotten too thick. (Also, when I had finished cutting and smooshed all the scrap pieces back into a ball, I needed to let the dough rest for about 5 minutes in order to press it back into a rectangle easily. It was too elastic to get it to stay when I first gathered it all back together.)

I heated my electric griddle to 300° and lightly sprayed it with cooking oil. I placed eight of the muffins on the hot griddle and set the timer for 5 minutes. That was not enough and I ended up going 7-8 minutes per side. (If your griddle is too hot, the muffins will burn before they cook through.)

Once the muffins were a lovely golden brown on the bottom, I flipped them and set the timer for another 7 minutes.

After the second side was golden brown and the muffin cooked through, I used a fork to gently split the muffins and laid them on a platter to cool while I finished cooking the others.

I repeated this process until all the muffins had been cooked.

It was SO easy and now I can do that freezer cooking session, this weekend to make the breakfast sandwiches. Yum! That post is coming soon!