Final crumpet recipe

October 11, 2015 - 6:38pm

PlainPopcorn

Description

I wasn't happy with the flavour and texture of many crumpet recipes online so I decided to find something that did work for me. This is the crumpet recipe I wrote after many tests with other recipes. See my post here in the challenges forum http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/43608/crumpet-inconsistencies-please-help

I think this recipe gives me constant good results and tastes good. But I do understand that it's subjective.

Many fresh loaf people gave me advice on the things I was struggling with so I couldn't have made this without them.

Thank you.

If I forgot something, made a mistake or when you have questions don't hesitate to ask.

Summary

Yield	crumpets
Prep time
Cooking time
Total time

Ingredients

1 t

Sugar

200 ml

Whole milk

100 ml

boiling water

2 t

dried yeast

150 g

Strong white flour

100 g

plain white flour

2 T

white vinegar (Use anywhere between 1 and 2.5 T of vinegar, I think 2 T works fine.)

1 pn

salt (Salt to taste, don't go above 3.5 ml.)

1 1⁄2 t

baking powder (Use anywhere between 1 and 2 teaspoons of baking powder, see additional notes.)

20 ml

water (after first rise, add approximately 20 ml. Batter should be thicker than pancake batter.)

oil (for greasing rings and pan or hotplate.)

Instructions

Mix sugar, milk, and boiling water(which together with the milk makes a lukewarm liquid) in a bowl or jug and stir in the yeast. Leave it in a warm place for 15 minutes.

Combine the flours in a mixing bowl. Stir in the liquid and mix vigorously until smooth. Now mix in the vinegar.

Cover with a damp towel and leave in a warm place for 1 hour and 45 minutes to 2 hours until nice and bubbly.

Now add in salt, 20 ml water (approx, see ingredients) and mix. If you are confident you have the right consistency you can now add in the baking powder (approx 1.5 tsps, see ingredients and additional notes). Mix well, cover with damp towel and rise for 45 minutes in a warm place.

My house tends to be too cold to properly rise anything in so I use my oven to rise dough and batter like this. With this batter I shoot for a 34 to 45 degree celsius rising temp in the oven.

When your batter is nice and bubbly (like really fluffy and bubbly) you can start frying/baking them either on a hotplate (I recommend this) or just in a pan. When using a hotplate it usually takes 5 minutes to preheat (so plan ahead, it takes 5 minutes to grease the rings and 5 minutes to heat the hotplate and the rings) and the temperature should ideally be somewhere between 165 and 200 degree celsius. When using a regular pan on the stove aim for a medium low heat. Just try what works best and be prepared to sacrifice the first crumpet.

So grease your cooking surface and the rings, place greased rings on cooking surface and start preheating the hotplate or the pan. When the pan/hotplate and rings are nice and hot, ladle in the batter so it reaches about 1.75 ~2 cm high. Watch as holes start to form and the top starts to dry up. Once the top is set you can choose to de-ring and flip them or to give them a golden brown colour with the use of the oven grill (heat from above only, door open). The bottom should be golden brown or a bit darker, chestnut brown is too dark.

You can eat them warm from the pan/hotplate or from under the grill. But if you decide to keep em (as you probably will since this recipe makes 12) you can keep them for a day or two and pop them in the toaster when you're ready to have them. They also freeze wonderfully, take them out of the freezer and let them sit for an hour and then toast them in the toaster. I tried microwaving a frozen one for 30 seconds followed by putting them in the toaster. It worked.

If by chance the crumb is a teensy weensy bit too wet when eaten right after cooking them, they are better the second day after putting them in the toaster. Or let them cool and toast them the same day, perhaps that helps as well.

Notes

On baking powder amounts and composition; the baking powder I use is from dr Oetker. It contains Disodium Diphosphate and Sodium Hydrogen Carbonate (the last one is also known as bicarbonate of soda). I don't know if the ingredients of the baking powder make any difference but I thought about including this info just in case.

If you use the full amount (2 tsps) you will get a very bubbly batter that results in large and deep holes in the crumpets which is what I was looking for. You can taste the baking powder in the baked crumpets at this amount if you have a sharp sense of taste, but it's not necessarily a bad taste. Definitely a hundred times better than the taste of baking soda which is often used in crumpet recipes. But this is subjective. I would not be surprised if there were people who did not mind the taste of baking soda but who detested the taste of baking powder.

I calculated the amount of baking powder by using a conversion rates I found on the internet that lets you convert baking soda to baking powder that also takes into account other (acidic) ingredients.

If you do choose to use less than the maximum amount of baking powder you do sacrifice some of the bubbliness but you can always try to make up for it a bit by keeping the covered batter in a 40~45 degree celcius oven during the second rise. Just try to get as much big bubbles in the batter and you should be fine.

Trouble shooting;

-no holes on top? either the batter is too thin (so the holes will fill up again), the crumpet too high, the batter too thick (so holes never appear in the first place) or the temperature too low.

-top won't set? either the batter is too thin, the crumpet too high or the temperature too low.

-batter won't rise during second rise? put it in a warmer place, maybe you forgot the baking powder?

-the crumpets are stuck to the rings when I want to de-ring them? Ideally the crumpets shrink away from the rings if the surface and the rings are hot enough and if you used enough oil to grease them. But sometimes they stick anyway. Just use a knife to free them, or toothpick if you don't want to scratch the rings.

-the inside is uncooked/soggy/pastelike but everything else seems fine? the inside of a crumpet should be somewhere between a pancake and a fresh ciabatta when it comes to the wetness of the crumb. It should not feel pastelike, and if it is it's probably because the batter was too thin. This can happen if your flour sucks up less water than other flours of the same kind. Just remember that the batter should be thicker than pancake batter.