These were homemade English muffins.
I made English muffins before, which were
whole wheat. This time I adapted a different recipe that I found in a King Arthur flour catalog. It calls for all purpose flour and makes a starter that takes several hours (or overnight) but usually produces flavorful breads. I left my starter for about 7 hours that looked nicely puffy. I finished making dough with bread machine. The dough was so runny and sticky. It was very difficult to scoop 1/4 cup dough into each ring on the heated griddle. The cooked muffins looked like muffins and tasted like muffins, well, more like just yeasted bread.
A little dense and chewy. They didn't get golden-toasted in the toaster oven on "level 7." Their taste and texture weren't evil but not what I expected. Looking back to the recipe, I realized sugar wasn't on the ingredient list. Like French lean crusty bread, sugar isn't always needed to make a good bread. So I didn't think it was strange at all. Meanwhile, the recipe called for 2 table spoons of Non-Diastatic Malt Powder. I had never heard it. I had malt powder in the freezer, but didn't know it was non-diastatic. I checked its name. It was "Diastatic" Malt Powder. I didn't know the difference but felt I shouldn't substitute one with the other. So I skipped all non-diastatic malt powder and added a half teaspoon of diastatic malt powder just for a flavor. Later, I learned from online sites that non-diastatic malt powder was "a substitute for sugar and does not contain the enzymes to enhance the breakdown of starch into sugar," which diastatic malt powder does. I see. There wasn't no sugar! Still I don't know what if non-diastatic malt powder were in my muffins. I should buy non-diastatic malt powder to experiment with it, shouldn't I?
