English Crumpets (a La Warburtons)

Warburtons recently published their recipe, or rather the ingredients in their crumpets.Being in Mexico, and unable to buy crumpets anyway, I thought I'd have a go at making my own.

The ingredients for crumpets are, surprisingly, simple. Things that most people will have on hard, or can easily improvise.

150g Plain Flour

200ml Water

1/2 tsp Salt

1/2 tsp Sugar

1 tsp Baking Powder

1tsp Dried Yeast or 1 1/2 tbsp of live yeast

Mixing bowl

Wooden Spoon or Mixer with a Dough Hook

Metal Chef Rings (or Metal Cookie Cutters

Skillet

All recipe books suggest mixing things gradually, but I don't have time for that nonsense, so lob everything apart from the yeast into the mixing bowl and mix. If you're using a spoon to mix, you need to mix until your arm is about to fall off. If you're like me and have a Kitchen Aid, mix in that for about 5 minutes.

You're making a batter not a dough here.

I'm using a live yoghurt yeast (picture 1) which I keep in the fridge and keep feeding with milk on a regular basis. When you open the pot it stinks like home made beer (which is understandable since it's very yeasty), but it's a very good yeast.

I feed it with the only milk available here in Mexico, long life carton milk. The original live yoghurt came from a local woman who has a cow in January and I've kept feeding and using it since then.

Don't over mix the yeast in to the batter. Give it a minute of stirring (regardless of whether you are hand mixing or using a mixer).

Cover the bowl with a cloth and leave it at room temperature for at least 15 minutes, but up to an hour if you have time. Again, most recipes say the batter will rise, but I've yet to see it do so. Maybe I do something wrong, but since they seem to taste pretty good, I don't care.

A flat skillet like this is fairly common in most Mexican markets. They tend to be a bit more basic that this one. I actually bought this from a cook shop in St Albans, Hertfordshire about 20 years ago, but any pan that gets super hot will suffice.

The first time I made these, I just used the one large cookie cutter and a regular small frying pan. It took sooooo long for each one to cook through though. This time, I'm using all the cutters I have. The downside is that this means I'll have 5 gradually smaller crumpets, right down to the smallest, single bite crumpet.

Put the griddle pan on a low heat and spray it with oil. I prefer spray butter, but it's a lubricant so it makes no difference.

Make sure that you grease the cookie cutters really well on the inside. If you don't the crumpets will stick to the side and you'll have to cut them out!

Place the cookie cutters on the griddle pan. Pour enough batter into each to come up about 3/4 of an inch.

The crumpets will need to bake/griddle inside the cookie cutter for about 5 minutes so that the bottom and sides cook enough to hold their shape. As they are cooking, the top should start opening up with small bubble holes (image 2).

Once the top is full of holes (Image 3), carefully remove the cookie cutter. If you greased the insides well enough, the cutter should lift off leaving the crumpet on the skillet. If not, (Image 4) give it a little encouragement with a knife.

The crumpet should be mostly cooked through by now. As the holes start forming on the top, you'll see a darkening from the outside to the inside, similar to the way a pancake cooks (since a crumpet is essentially a small super fat pancake anyway!). At this point, flip them over and cook for a couple minutes more to finish the tops off. It might be a good idea to oil the skillet again at this point so any uncooked batter doesn't stick.

You should now have approximately 6 crumpets (depending on how big your cookie cutters are).

To eat them, toast both sides under a grill and butter the top (with the holes). I like Marmite on mine too, but again, this is not really available in Mexico!