Rachel Wyman

Like every time you stretch gluten, it freaks out a little bit and you have to let it rest so that it will relax enough to do the next thing. I took the dough out of the refrigerator and I have flattened it into a pan so it's the right thickness for our muffins.

We can open this one to this person. That's pretty amazing. Look at that.

It's a little bit closer.

Oh my gosh. Look at that.

Wow.

That's why I don't like English muffins.

I've never liked English muffins my whole life because this is what I've always been offered. It smells like box, like cardboard.

I think it'll be pulled off well.

These have been sitting in a bag for like all week.

These are the vinegar recipe. Look at that. It looks like exactly like a Thomas's.

You know, it's like when your kids play sports and you're like super nervous for them, even though it has no bearing on you.

Well, if it were kept at room temperature, it would be kind of like this. It wouldn't have enough body, I guess. It slows down the fermentation. So yeast, it's like a toddler. If it's warm and you give it sugar, it's going to go crazy. And then it's going to die.

Yeah, exactly. Totally. And then they slow down.

I've been baking since I was old enough to hold a pastry bag. I literally wrote my name with a pastry bag before a pencil.

The flour that I'm used to using is about 11%, 12% protein. And my options were a 9% protein or a 13% protein. So we had to blend the flours together. The last thing that I want is to send the judges chewy donuts.

So what I was going to tell you, a couple things, because I neglected to send you anything about me. I used to do recipe development for a company that created products for grocery stores all over the country. Oh, yeah. So reverse engineering was like my jam. Oh, my God. I'm so excited. This is exactly what would happen. They would bring me a sample of something they wanted.

And this was Wegmans and Target and Whole Foods. Oh, you were in the big time. I worked with them. This is the big time. Yeah. No, so I made the bread on the Cheesecake Factory table.

So I lived in this space that you're doing this story on.

It is a big space.

The inside of the Thomas's almost reminds me of like a dense pancake. You know, like a batter that's almost poured. So we decided that we need to add more hydration to our dough. We're going to overproof it on purpose so it sits a little flatter on the griddle. Ours got a lot of loft, so we kind of have to make them a little crappier.

The difficulty is that the Thomas's muffin is great and ours is not. So I think I can just get a lower quality flour and work with that. Also, I've been buttering the griddle, but also we're using... you know, plus gras, like 84% butter, fat butter. It's like super yellow. So I need to get, I think I'm just going to oil it.

And then the students even pointed out there's no butter in the ingredient deck. So they're not using butter on any surface. So I'll just use the same oil.

I know, they are. They really are. The flavor yesterday was amazing, but not like Thomas's. They're like, chef, you just need to make it taste worse.