Muffin Dish

Dish and lid
Bawden, Edward
after 1960
© National Maritime Museum Collections   

I cannot contemplate arriving in Greenwich except by boat.  This World Heritage Site is forever linked to its maritime history and arriving by any other means of transport just seems wrong.  On this day I jump aboard the Thames Clipper at Bankside Pier for the 25 minute trip down river, passing the Tower of London, ducking under Tower Bridge, past Dickensian alehouses and the, admittedly, less picturesque complex of flats looking a little like a Tuscan hill village - but maybe it's just me who sees this resemblance.  Soon the magnificence of Greenwich starts to unfold.

I'm really here for the *Turner & the Sea exhibition at The National Maritime Museum but, en route, my eye is caught by the unmistakable hand of Edward Bawden.  Surprisingly, it is decorating a Wedgwood dinner service.  It's the dish lid that I notice.  Purple petals radiating out from the centre of the white dome, echoed in soft grey on plate, saucer and cup.  An unexpected touch of domesticity in a temple to heroic maritime history. A ship's menu from the 1960's is placed alongside. The white bone china 'Heartsease' service is lithographic transfer printed in purple, grey and black using Bawden's 1952 design for Josiah Wedgwood and Sons Ltd.  It's here because it was supplied to the Orient Line, now part of P&O, though this lovely service was confined to First Class.  Tourist Class passengers had to make do with a much more utilitarian, grey-on-white design.

Wedgwood commissioned a number of other 20th century British artists to design ceramics including Eric Ravilious, Rex Whistler and John Piper.  Born in Essex in 1903, Edward Bawden (C.B.I., R.A., R.D.I.) studied illustration, book design and mural painting at the Cambridge School of Art and then the Royal College of Art where he was taught by Paul Nash.  His first commission was to paint the murals in the dining rooms of Morley College in south-east London, along with fellow students Eric Ravilious and Charles Mahoney. Bawden was allocated the one uninterrupted wall on which he painted scenes from Shakespeare's plays. His work included landscapes, book illustrations and cover designs for publishing houses, posters and advertisements, including for London Transport. He also served as an Official War Artist in the British Army. Later he returned to mural painting and graphic design.  I know him best for his distinctive linocuts, such as those depicting London Monuments and London Markets.

I'm not usually drawn to heavily patterned ceramics but Bawden's 'Heartsease' design is undeniably beautiful. The plate and cover I initially take to be a soup dish with lid - visions of weaving waiters battling high seas - turns out to be a muffin dish. A dish for muffins seems a quaint idea today but the Georgians, Victorians and Edwardians all loved a silver or silver-plate muffin dish.  A reservoir in the base of the dish was filled with hot water to keep the muffins desirably warm and soft at table.  Later a warmed, covered china dish sufficed. Clearly a muffin dish was still deemed necessary in the 1950/60s where standards for first class passengers could not be allowed to slip.

English Muffin recipes started to appear in print the mid-18th century.  From Hannah Glasse in 1747 to Florence Jack in 1914, muffin recipes were considered an essential part of the cook's repertoire. By 1954 Dorothy Hartley was writing of muffins being "usually obtained from the bakehouse" but long before this the 'Muffin Man' peddled his wares on the city streets.  Elizabeth David devotes a chapter to Crumpets and Muffins in her English Bread and Yeast Cookery and points out that although they are "among the most famous of English specialities", by the 1970's they "are more talked about than actually experienced".  We revisit them only when "the spasmodic wave of nostalgia for bygone popular specialities breaks over the British press and its cookery contributors".  So here we are again, for in 2014 crumpets and English muffins are enjoying a revival.

"Many a muffin-man regards warm flour as his No. 1 secret."

Walter Banfield, Manna, 1937

Master baker John Kirkland, in 1907, described muffins as "thick, extremely light, fermented dough cakes, not holey or tough, three inches across and almost two inches thick".  This recipe for muffins is based on one in The Bread Book by Linda Collister & Anthony Blake (first pub: 1993) which references John Kirkland.

English Muffins
(makes 8)

340g (12 oz) unbleached white bread flour
110g(4 oz) unbleached plain white four
10g (¼ oz) salt
15g (½ oz) fresh yeast
½ teaspoon sugar
230ml (8 fl oz) lukewarm water
140ml (5 fl oz) lukewarm milk
Flour for dusting
Rice flour or cornmeal for dusting

Mix the flours and salt in a large mixing bowl and warm in a 150C (Gas 2) oven for a few minutes.  Crumble the yeast in to a small bowl, add the sugar and half the lukewarm water and mix to a cream.
Make a well in the flour and add the yeast liquid, the rest of the water and the milk.  Mix with your hand to a soft, slightly sticky dough.  With floured hands, either knead the dough against the side of the bowl or turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and work for 10 minutes until it's no longer sticky but soft, elastic and smooth.  Put the dough into the bowl, cover with a damp cloth and leave to rise in a warm place for about 1 hour or until doubled in size.
Turn out the dough and knead again for 5 minutes (John Kirkland recommends dipping your hands in lukewarm water first).  Return the dough to the bowl, cover and leave for a further 30 minutes.
Divide the dough into 8 pieces and, using rice flour to dust, form gently into rounds.  Place on a baking tray dusted with rice flour and sprinkle over more rice flour.  Place a second light baking tray on top, then a damp cloth and leave to rise in a warm place for a final 30 minutes.
Heat an un-greased griddle or cast-iron frying pan until moderately hot.  Put the muffins onto the griddle topside down.  Cook for 10-12 minutes on each side until golden brown.  They are cooked when the sides spring back when pressed.

English muffins do not keep well.  If you don't eat them straight from the griddle you may need Mary McNeill's advice from The Book of Breakfasts published in 1932, "Muffins should not be split and toasted.  The correct way to serve them is to open them slightly at their joint all the way round, toast them back and front, tear them open and butter the inside liberally.  Serve hot."

I'm not sure muffin dishes will have a revival any time soon but I would certainly say yes to that Edward Bawden 'Heartsease' dish.  As if the design were not enough,  there's the choice of subject, Heartsease, Viola tricolour, the wild pansy, symbol for thoughts and faithfulness, Oberon's "... little Western flower".

Edward Bawden
1903-1989

Sources:
The National Martime Museum, Greenwich
Josiah Wedgwood Museum
edwardbawden.co.uk 
Tate
The Morley College Murals by Elaine Andrews
English Bread and Yeast Cookery by Elizabeth David
The Bread Book by Linda Collister & Anthony Blake

* The Turner and the Sea exhibition has now moved on to The Peabody Essex Museum, Salem MA, USA and runs from 31 May - 1 September 2014