Peas on the Plate

** This post was updated on June 27, 2026 to reflect an adjusted recipe and some more useful tips!

Raise your hand if you’ve ever been personally victimized by a cooking video.

One morning, bleary with sleep and enamored by the promise of a plan-free Saturday that was ahead of me, I was scrolling through my recommended Instagram videos and came across a video with an English muffin recipe that looked amazing and simple. I was entranced. Intrigued. I have always been intimidated by baking bread and here was this kind soul explaining it in a way that made it seem approachable, straightforward, and like it doesn’t take too long.

When I attempted to make it, the final product was dense and, while it tasted fine, I didn’t feel compelled to go for another. I think this was 90% user error (I was impatient) and 10% recipe issue (they encouraged hand mixing, which is possible, but much, much more difficult). Since I went on that adventure, I’ve been trying to find another recipe that’s a little easier.

I finally found a bread flour English muffin recipe from the only monarch I support: King Arthur Flour. Coupled with their corresponding blog post to speak to technique, backed by a couple of successful bread bakes, I had a good feeling about this.

The recipe worked. Homemade English muffins are a goddamn delight and about a thousand times better than store-bought, which have recently started tasting like dry cardboard without any salt. I even made them again a couple weeks later, distributing them to friends and loved ones like some kind of carb fairy. However, I do think the blog post and recipe from the true King of the North are missing a few important details/caveats, so that’s why I’m posting it here.

And transparently, the actual cooking part of this is a pain in the ass, especially if you have a smaller oven, but it’s definitely worth it. They freeze up really well (just give them a little bit of time in the fridge to thaw out before toasting and eating), you can make them as thick or as thin as you want them to depending on what kind of toaster you have, and we all know that every bread tastes better when you make it yourself because the added topping of pretension is a nice finishing flavor.

English Muffin Baking Tips

• How to bake with instant/RapidRise yeast: Since this recipe uses instant yeast, I wanted to make note of how it differs from regular yeast. You don’t bloom it in a separate cup of warm liquid. Instead, you mix it in with the main ingredients and pour the warmed liquid (in this case, milk) on top. However, instant yeast requires hotter liquid – between 120 – 130 degrees Fahrenheit. To heat the milk to this temperature, pop it in the microwave for two minutes, stirring every 30 seconds or so to prevent scalding.
• What kind of milk to use: the original recipe doesn’t specify. I used 2%. I’d be careful about using whole milk or something heavier lest it impact the dough somehow. 
• Don’t panic if your dough texture isn’t just right. The blog post from King Arthur Flour makes the dough look satiny and shiny and pretty. That is not how mine looked either time I made these, but the final product still had a great texture.

• Use a dark pan. I don’t have an electric griddle. I have a square nonstick griddle pan with tons of scratches on it that’s probably on its last legs after 20 years of use. That being said, it outperformed my newer, nicer stainless steel pans considerably for this recipe, so I recommend using a dark pan to brown the muffins before popping them into the oven for the final stretch.
• The first batch will take forever. Seriously. It takes a thousand years to get the first batch (in my case that meant four muffins) hot enough to brown because this is a “low and slow” type of recipe. Don’t panic. I regret to inform you that you’ll just have to wait.

You will love these. They’re fluffy, a little tangy, perfect with butter and…more importantly…pretty forgiving. Let me know what you think with a review or a comment!