I said I’d deviate from Richard Bertinet some time soon and, finding myself with a spare afternoon and wanting to make it a productive one, I mined my “Random recipes” folder and turned up this one. I used to eat crumpets a bit obsessively 2nd year of university so making them myself is something that I’ve been meaning to try for a while.
The batter (... please ignore the fact that the blog is called dough diaries. I think I can get away with batter on this one occasion) was started with 50ml boiling water and 275ml whole milk being mixed together, which ended up with a tepid temperature. I mixed my precious fresh yeast into this... very inexactly... I think it might have been 15g... maybe... Anyway, I mixed it in, along with a teaspoon of sugar, and then the liquid went to sit in a warm place for 15 minutes.
In the meantime, I actually had cake decorating to get on with (maybe my afternoon wasn’t quite so free as I thought), so I covered the kitchen in food colouring before going back to the crumpet mix. When I did eventually get back to it, I sieved 240g strong white bread flour, 1 “scant” teaspoon of baking powder and a teaspoon of salt into a large mixing bowl. I then gradually stirred in the water/yeast mix and beat vigorously to make a smooth but fairly thick batter. No need to vigorously knead for 10 minutes with this one though because this batter got covered and went straight back to the warm spot in the house (with a little encouragement, hugged by a warm wheat bag) to grow and bubble for about an hour.
This was followed by more royal icing and food colouring splattered over the kitchen, and me constantly looking at the time thinking “pants, mum’ll be home soon, I really need to tidy up”. I think I managed to get the kitchen half tidy before my batter looked ready, so I pretty much had to go for it and hope that I could rectify the bomb site while waiting for my crumpets to cook.
Time to get the pan and the pastry rings ready. For anyone unfamiliar with crumpets, they’re characteristically round and with lots of holes in the top. They’re cooked in some form of pan or skillet rather than in an oven and, for that perfect circle shape, need to be done in rings. I, however, don’t have rings of the same size... I’ve got 3 of similar sizes, so these had to do, and had to work in shifts. I greased them like mad with butter, completely paranoid that the batter was going to stick to the sides. I also greased the pan but was a little less worried on that front because it’s my fairly reliable non-stick one.
So, pan ready and heating, metal rings (good for conducting heat... and not melting) all greased, I brought out the batter, which had bubbled up nicely. I grabbed a large spoon and attempted to delicately scoop the batter out of the bowl and place it in the rings... then got a bit overenthusiastic with filling them, so did some far too full (learning from this experience, I’d say 2cm is plenty). They took a fair amount of time to cook (not surprising as these crumpets would have made pretty good door stops) and a few decided to blob out and loose their shape when I took the rings off and flipped them over (so I cheated and trimmed them with the rings again once they were cooked). They also seemed to be lacking the holes in the top that I was hoping for.
The test was in the tasting and, while they actually tasted great and far nicer than the shop bought ones, they were really doughy and dense. The batter itself had seemed fine so, after some reasoning, I’ve put this down to the pan not being quite hot enough and therefore the dough cooking without being enough oomph from the heat to rise and generate air bubbles. Filling the rings too full probably didn’t help either. For future reference, I think I need to treat cooking these like cooking pancakes. Do a test one first; it’ll probably be rubbish but will allow for temperature tinkering to get the rest of the batch spot on. Yet another lesson learned (... although it’d be nice if the next bread actually goes right...)
Simplified recipe
Ingredients
Makes 8 crumpets (or it’s meant to)
50ml boiling water
275ml whole milk
1 tablespoon dried yeast or 1-2 tablespoons fresh yeast
1 teaspoon caster sugar
240g strong white bread flour
1 “scant” teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
Butter, for greasing and for smothering your finished crumpets in
Method
1. Mix the boiling water and the milk; you should end up with tepid liquid. Mix the yeast into this liquid and put in a warm place for 15 minutes
2. Grab yourself a big mixing bowl and sift in the flour, salt and baking powder
3. Gradually mix the liquid into the dry mix and whisk to form a smooth but fairly thick batter. Cover the bowl and leave in a warm place for about an hour to rise and get bubbly
4. Heat a large frying pan over and medium heat and grease with butter. Get yourself several metal rings, grease thoroughly and place in the pan. Using a large spoon, gently spoon some of the mix into each ring (try not to knock too many of the bubbles out). Cook on that side for about 5 minutes or until set, then remove the rings, flip over and cook for another minute or so. Serve spread with plenty of melted butter
References
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