Crumpets with Butter

Ingredients

Equipment Needed

• •Heavy frying pan or flat griddle
• •8cm metal crumpet rings or egg rings
• •Wire cooling rack

Instructions

1. 1

   Make the batter

   Put the flour, salt, sugar, and yeast into a large bowl and stir them together. Warm the milk and water until it feels like a comfortable bath, no hotter. Pour it into the dry ingredients and beat with a wooden spoon until you have a smooth, thick batter with no lumps. It should be thicker than pancake batter but loose enough to pour slowly, something like double cream. Cover the bowl with a tea towel and leave it somewhere warm for an hour. The kitchen counter is fine if the heating is on.

   The milk should be warm to the touch, not hot. Too hot and you'll kill the yeast before it has a chance to do anything. Blood temperature. If you can hold your finger in it comfortably, it's right.
2. 2

   Let the yeast work

   After an hour the batter should have risen noticeably, with bubbles breaking on the surface and a smell that's warm and beery and slightly sweet. This is the yeast telling you it's ready. Dissolve the bicarbonate of soda in the warm water and stir it through the batter. It will fizz gently. Give it another ten minutes under the tea towel. The bicarb is what gives crumpets their holes, so don't skip this step and don't rush it.

   If the batter looks too thick after rising, add a splash more warm water. You want it to flow slowly when poured, settling into the ring and finding its own level. Too thick and you won't get holes. Too thin and it'll leak under the rings.
3. 3

   Cook the crumpets

   Set a heavy frying pan or flat griddle over a low to medium heat. This is important: too hot and the bottoms burn before the tops set; too cool and the batter just sits there looking pale and sorry. Grease the inside of your crumpet rings and the surface of the pan with a little butter or oil. Place the rings in the pan and pour batter into each one, filling them about a centimetre deep. Leave them alone. After a few minutes, bubbles will start to rise through the batter, bursting on the surface and leaving holes behind. This is the moment. Wait until the top has set and gone from glossy to matte, the edges have pulled away from the ring slightly, and the underside is a deep golden brown. It takes seven to eight minutes, but watch the crumpets, not the clock.

   If you don't have crumpet rings, clean tuna tins with both ends removed work just as well. Greased pastry cutters will do at a push. The ring is what gives a crumpet its shape and its height.
4. 4

   Flip and finish

   Ease the rings off with a cloth. Flip the crumpets and give the tops a minute, just enough to set them and take off the raw look, but not so long that they colour. The top should stay pale and holey. Transfer to a wire rack and repeat with the remaining batter, greasing the rings and pan each time.

5. 5

   Toast and butter

   When you're ready to eat, toast the crumpets until the edges crisp and the surface turns a light gold. The holey side goes up under the grill or into the toaster. Butter them immediately, while they're still hot, with good salted butter, as much as feels right. The butter will melt and pool into every hole, soaking through to the base. This is the whole point. There are few better feelings than putting a warm plate of these in front of someone on a slow morning.

Chef Tips

• •The heat of the pan is the only real skill here. Low and steady. If the first crumpet browns too fast on the bottom before the holes have formed on top, turn the heat down and wait a minute before trying the next one. The pan needs to be patient, and so do you.
• •Good salted butter is not negotiable. This is a dish of two ingredients: crumpet and butter. If the butter isn't good, you've lost half the recipe. Something from a proper dairy, with colour and flavour and a little crystalline crunch of salt. It matters here more than almost anywhere else.
• •They freeze beautifully. Make a full batch, let them cool completely, and freeze in a bag. Toast them from frozen when you want them. A freezer full of homemade crumpets is a quiet form of wealth.
• •If you want to take them somewhere slightly different, a thin slick of honey over the butter is good. Or Marmite, if you're that way inclined. But plain butter, melting into those holes, is the purest version, and the one I come back to.

Advance Preparation

• •Crumpets keep in an airtight container for two days and toast well from the fridge. They are better retoasted than eaten fresh from the pan, so making them ahead is no compromise at all.
• •Freeze cooked, cooled crumpets for up to two months. Toast directly from frozen, giving them an extra minute under the heat.

Frequently Asked Questions

Nutrition Information

1 serving (about 80g)