English Muffin Bread

I hope everyone had a great Christmas.  I had a wonderful first Christmas as a married lady with my hubby.  As much as I love Christmas, I'm a little bit relieved the holidays are winding down.  I enjoy the whole month of December, with all the decorations and parties, but it is a lot of work (and spending money and not eating so great!).  

One of my gifts this year to coworkers and family was English muffin bread.  If you haven't had English muffin bread before you are missing out.  My gift to you is that I will share my (veganized) recipe for you to enjoy yourself.

I used to beg my mom to make me a loaf of English muffin bread.  It tends to disappear quickly.  My mother's recipe is not vegan but the other week she gave us a loaf…a vegan one!  I didn't think it was possible, but it was so good, and my husband and I polished off half the load before breakfast time.  All it took was two simple substitutions and you too can have a (vegan) loaf of your very own.  

I'll admit.  It's a little bit of a pain in the butt to make and messy.  Well maybe I'm just messy.  Dylan had to clean the kitchen after I was done…flour everywhere.  Once you get the hang of it it's really not so hard to make.  Here's what you'll need…

Ingredients

• 5 1/2 cups four (spoon cups with a spoon to pack lightly)
• 2 packages of active dry yeast
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 cups unsweeted soy or almond milk (be conscious of allergies!)
• 1/2 water
• cornmeal
• vegan butter (for lining pans)

First you're going to combine 3 cups of flour, the yeast, sugar, salt and baking soda into a bowl.  Heat your milk and water in a separate pan until they are warm.   Since I was making these for coworkers I used soy milk because I wasn't sure if their kids had any nut allergies.  You have to be careful these days.  The soy milk came out fine and I used almond milk for my family at it was perfect as well.   After your water and milk are heated add this to the dry ingredients and stir in more flour to make a stiff batter.  I would recommend using an electric mixer for this.  Grease two 8.4x4.5 inch pans with vegan butter and sprinkle cornmeal on the sides.  Next you spoon your batter into the pans.  Cover your pans and let rise in a warm place for about 45 minutes.  I don't have too many warm spots in my apartment so I keep it in the oven on the warm setting.  

Next cook your breads at 400 degrees for 25 minutes and you're done!  Remove the bread from the pans right away and let the loaves cool.  Make sure you toast this bread before you eat it!  I recommend slicing it nice and thin.  I've also used this bread to make garlic bread.  Yum.  

I have a couple more packs of yeast calling for me to crank out some more loaves of this bread while we are on winter break.  I think I'm in trouble.  As you can see from the meal above, we've been eating very well this holiday!

Sophie get's some mashed potatoes as well!  Merry Christmas everyone!