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Griddled English Muffins: Nooks, Crannies, and a Dry Pan

Name: Griddled English Muffins: Nooks, Crannies, and a Dry Pan
Total time: 114 min
Yield: 12 servings
Cuisine: American brunch
Ingredients: 500 g Bread flour; 300 ml Whole milk, lukewarm; 7 g Instant dried yeast; 1 tsp Caster sugar; 9 g Fine salt; 30 g Unsalted butter, soft; 4 tbsp Semolina or coarse polenta, for dusting

English muffins are a griddle bread, not an oven bread, and that is where the nooks and crannies come from. The dough is wet, slack and sticky; the cooking is low and slow on a dry pan so the surface sets before the inside expands, trapping the gas pockets that make the crannies. It is a 95-minute recipe with about 12 minutes of actual work.

1 burner95 min12 servesEarly plateGriddleholds: 3 days in a paper bag, 3 months frozenPosted 2026-09-25By The Griddle Desk

Ingredient card

Item	Amount
Bread flour	500 g
Whole milk, lukewarm	300 ml
Instant dried yeast	7 g
Caster sugar	1 tsp
Fine salt	9 g
Unsalted butter, soft	30 g
Semolina or coarse polenta, for dusting	4 tbsp

Scaling
for 2: A quarter batch: 250 g flour, half a sachet of yeast. One griddle round.
for 4: Half batch, 500 g flour. Two rounds, about 20 minutes of griddle time.
for 8: Full batch as written, twelve muffins. Griddle in three rounds of four and keep the finished ones warm under a cloth — they must not be stacked hot or the sides go soggy.

Time budget and burner map

Mix everything but the semolina into a wet, sticky dough0:00–0:08 · 8 min

Knead or fold until it just smooths, still tacky0:08–0:14 · 6 min

First proof, covered, until doubled0:14–1:14 · 60 min

Divide into 12, shape into balls, dust with semolina1:14–1:20 · 6 min

Second proof on the dusted tray1:20–1:40 · 20 min

Griddle dry over low heat, 7 minutes a side1:40–1:54 · 14 min

T+0114 minT+114

Make ahead

Do the first proof overnight in the fridge. Cold dough is far easier to divide and shape, and the flavour is noticeably better at 12 hours than at 1.
Dust the proofing tray generously with semolina. The muffins must not stick — if you have to pull them off the tray the tops deflate.
Bake the whole batch, cool completely, then freeze in a bag with the air pushed out. Split before freezing: a frozen pre-split muffin goes straight into the toaster.

To the pass

Split with a fork, not a knife. Push the tines in around the equator and prise it open — that is what keeps the crannies intact on both halves.
Toast cut side down in a dry pan for 2 minutes before buttering. The cut face needs to dry out first or the butter just soaks in.
Butter both halves while hot, then fill. A cold muffin will not take butter evenly.

Where it goes wrong

Greasing the pan. A dry pan is the whole method. Fat fries the surface and the sides go flat and shiny instead of pale and matte.
Grinding the dough when dividing. Cut and gently round; a tight shape gives a tight crumb with no crannies.
Rolling the dough out and cutting rounds. That gives you a flat disc with a sealed edge. Shaped balls, flattened slightly with the palm, are the correct form.

The method, in full

Why a dry pan and low heat

English muffins get their open crumb from a temperature differential. The griddle at about 160 °C sets the outside of the dough in the first 90 seconds, forming a skin. The inside is still rising and the gas has nowhere to go, so it pushes into whatever weak spots exist and creates the irregular pockets. If the pan is hotter than about 180 °C, the crust sets too thick and the middle stays doughy. If it is below 150 °C, the sides never set, the muffin slumps and you get a dense puck.

Check the pan with a drop of water: it should sizzle and vanish in about a second. That is roughly 160 °C.

The dough is supposed to be sticky

This is around 63 percent hydration — wetter than a sandwich loaf and much wetter than a bagel dough. If you add flour until it stops sticking to your hands, you have made a different, denser bread. Work with wet hands, a bench scraper and a short 6-minute knead, and let the 60-minute proof do the rest of the development.

If the dough is genuinely unmanageable, chill it for 20 minutes rather than adding flour. Cold dough firms up without changing the recipe.

Splitting, storage and the freezer

A fork splits along the natural seam the griddle created and leaves the crannies exposed; a knife slices through them and compresses the crumb. Push the tines in about 1 cm all the way around, then pull the halves apart with your hands.

They keep three days in a paper bag at room temperature. In plastic they go soft on the outside and stay hard in the middle — the opposite of what you want. Frozen, they hold three months; split first, then freeze, and toast from frozen without thawing.

Kitchen questions

Can I make these in the oven?

You can, at 200 °C for 15 minutes on a preheated tray, but you lose most of the crannies because the dry oven air sets the surface too evenly. Griddle is the method; oven is the fallback if you are making more than twelve.

Why did my muffins not rise on the griddle?

Usually an under-proofed second rise or a pan that was too hot. The second proof should leave the balls visibly puffy and about 1.5 times their shaped size. If they went straight from the bowl to the pan, they had no gas left to make crannies.

How do I know they are cooked through?

They should read 96 °C in the centre and feel light for their size. If they feel heavy, they are underdone in the middle — finish them in a 180 °C oven for 6 minutes.