Making your own

Crumpets are easy to make. Candidly, it's easier to open a packet of Warburtons, but making your own is a bit of fun, and crumpets are particularly lovely fresh and hot from the pan.

Be warned that they take a while to cook - and mustn't be rushed - so don't start the process starving hungry.

Preamble: Of all the recipes in all the world

There are numerous recipes for crumpets on the online. Without wishing to bore people with detail, here are some of the options.

Ingredients

Flour: at one extreme, you have 100% “strong” bread flour, at the other, 100% plain flour. Bread flour helps to create more rise from the yeast but can be a bit chewy - so most recipes (including ours) have a mix of the two.

Milk vs Water: Again there are two extremes: 100% water going to 100% milk. Milk provides additional depth of flavour, but we find that too much makes the batter heavy, and therefore use a higher weighting of water than milk.

Consistency: the variations are all on a theme of around 150ml (5.3 floz) of liquid to 100g (3.5 oz) of flour.

Raising agents: some recipes blaze a trail with yeast alone. This won't make for a successful crumpet.

Preparing the batter

Yeast: several recipes don't bother, but we've found that mixing the dried yeast with liquid before adding to the flour helps with the raising process.

Salt: salt has a retarding effect on the activity of the yeast, so it's better to add this after the first raising process (see below).

Liquids: while it takes a little longer, adding some of the liquid at the end of the process produces a more liquid batter, which makes cooking easier.

Bicarbonate of soda: several recipes allow a few minutes for further proofing after the addition of the bicarbonate of soda. We've found that while this makes the final mixture look more bubbly, the crumpets actually come out less bubbly - presumably because the effect of the soda reduces over time.

Cooking the crumpets

Oil: while the crumpet rings need to be greased with butter, the pan itself really doesn't need anything else - the batter doesn't stick to the pan. If you have a particularly ineffective non-stick pan, just add a little butter - it won't burn if you're cooking on a low heat. The point is, ignore those who suggest oil for cooking.

The main event:

No items found.