English Muffin Sourdough Bread for Grilled Cheese with Tomato Soup

As Louisiana, Oregon and the rest of the country do our #AloneTogether routines, Bake This Day brings you English Muffin Bread, an easy and delicious addition to your sourdough repertoire along with a short lesson on Bread Pillar #2: Bread Percentage. This often over-mystified concept is simple to understand! 

We add to this a delicious Tomato Soup recipe with real cream, a red blanket of comfort so the frets don’t take over at your house. Good bread is stress relieving, after all, and eating together floods our happiness receptors with “We are going to make it through” chemistry.

This classic loaf bread requires no kneading and demonstrates a bread percentage of 76, even higher than our standard tartine bread recipes.  We will show you how this is calculated and how this knowledge might help you steer through recipes as a fellow Bread Head.

Bake This Day English Muffin Bread

Ingredients:

290 grams of tepid water

100 grams of whole milk

550 grams of active starter

250 grams of pastry flour

300 grams of bread flour

18 grams of salt

2 tablespoons honey

1 gram of baking soda in 30 grams of water

In a large bowl stir together the milk, water, honey and 100% starter.

Add the flours and stir until well blended.

Let autolyze for 30 minutes.

Add the salt and stir well.

Cover allow to double in size, about 90 minutes.

After this rise, add baking soda in water, folding in carefully.

Divide into two greased loaf pans and cover to proof double in size.

Baking:

Bake at 375 for 40 minutes, internal temperature 200 degrees.

Cool on a rack for 15 minutes and then remove to rack to cool.

This makes airy, crunchy delicious toast or the perfect grilled cheese sandwich.  The cheese melts a bit up into the larger holes in the bread, mmmmm, OH SO GOOD!

What is Bread Percentage?

This is simply the ratio of liquid in a recipe to the total amount of flour.  For instance, our Microbrew Bread of last month’s post has 1000gms of flour and 700 gm of water, so the bread percentage is 70.  700/1000.

English Muffin Bread is a higher percentage with 550 grams of bread flour and 420 grams of milk and water, a whopping 76 bread percentage. 420/550.

And, you ask, “Who cares?”

YOU DO, trust us.  A higher bread percentage allows steam to add to the rise of the bread during baking, creating a beautiful open crumb and crunchy texture when toasted.  Lower percentage breads are also excellent with fine closed crumb textures, but the higher percentages also allow a delicious crust from the steam and a chewy texture.

You can vary your bread percentage to please your own use of bread types and flours over time, an evolving art form that is all yours in your own kitchen.  Stay tuned to Bake This Day as we feature some low percentage breads for comparison later this year.

Creamed Tomato Soup with Pesto

1 large sweet onion chopped

1 clove chopped garlic

1 26 ounce can puree tomatoes

6 cups chicken broth, preferably homemade

½ cup heavy whipping cream

2 tablespoons pesto sauce

2 teaspoons anchovy paste

½ cup whole wheat orzo

2 teaspoons honey

In 2 tablespoons olive oil, sauté the chopped onions until soft add garlic the last 30 seconds.

Add the can of tomatoes broth and honey, return to simmer for 15 minutes.

Using an immersion blender, quickly puree the onions, leaving some small bits for texture.

Now, add the orzo and pesto sauce and simmer an additional 15 minutes. Add whipping cream, stir and return to slow simmer.

This is even better, of course, after an overnight in your refrigerator to marry the flavors.

Serve with a dollop of sour cream, pesto or pepita seed and that delectable grilled cheese on English Muffin Bread. 

Bake This Day Weekly Picks:

If baking is just too much right now in the chaotic school/workspace/homeplace you are trying to maintain this month, pop these delicious Forna de Minas Pao de Queijo in the oven for five minutes and try popping these Brazilian cheesy bread morsels instead of advils for your headache.

Pure Synergy makes a whole rainbow of healthy supplements, most recently they sent Reseveratrol (the magical antioxidant in red wine), oregano and grape seed supplements.

VitEyes is a supplement that is basically salmon in a pill! Astaxanthin for your eye health—since we are all so enslaved to our screens these days to keep the world turning.

All hyperlinked products have been gifted.