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Sourdough Crumpets (Yeast Too)
Crumpets are simple porous griddle cakes eaten at teatime in the the UK and beyond. Made with just a few ingredients, they highlight the flavor of the grain flour you choose and your fermentation approach, sourdough or yeast. Baking powder is also part of the leavening process, creating a lot of bubbles that pop through the batter and leave holes on the top of the crumpet. Once you get the hang of how hot to make your pan and how tall to pour the batter (it is cooked in rings), crumpets are so easy to make and absolutely scrumptious with butter and jam melted into the spongy surface.
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Cooking Tips
It took me a few batches to figure out how to make good crumpets and here are the key things I learned:
Get the pan hot enough for a quiet sizzle when you pour in the batter, and then lower the heat for the rest of the cooking. If you cook the crumpets too fast, the bottoms will burn before the tops are cooked.
Don’t fill the rings more than a centimeter (about 3/8 inch) high. If you fill too high, again the bottom of the crumpet will burn before the top is cooked.
Let the top of the crumpets bubble through and dry out before considering the option to flip, unless the bottoms are burning of course. When you flip too soon, the top seals up and you won’t have classic crumpets with holes for butter to melt into.
Use your flipping spatula and sense of smell to know if the bottoms of the crumpets are burning. If this happens, lower the pan heat and/or crumpet height for the next round.
Sourdough vs. Yeast
In the crumpet recipe options below, the main distinction is whether you use instant yeast or sourdough starter because this changes the batter building process and the amount of baking powder and salt (the sourdough version uses more baking powder and therefore less salt). Apart from that, you can substitute flour types as you like. The whole grain spelt sourdough crumpet below was made by feeding some of my all purpose starter with 110g spelt flour and 110g water the night before.
Slighty sweet, nutty flavor of spelt
For sourdough crumpets you can use discard from your refrigerator or starter that you let double after a feeding. You do want the starter to have some acidity and not be fed just moments before, because some of the crumpet bubbles will come from the reaction between the acid in your sourdough starter and the baking powder. Additional bubbles come from the reaction of heat and baking powder, and the CO2 from the fermentation in the starter.
With yeast crumpets, you get some bubbles from about 30-60 minutes of yeast fermentation after you mix the batter, and from the reaction between the heat and the baking powder.
Sourdough Crumpets (Yeast Too)
Homemade crumpets make a tasty, simple snack or breakfast. With their spongy texture and hole-covered surface, they absorb melted butter and jam and showcase the flavor of whatever flour you choose to make them with. Here are recipes for all purpose flour and whole grain spelt crumpets, with sourdough or yeast fermentation.
Ingredients
Sourdough
Yeast
Instructions
Sourdough Batter
Yeast Batter
Cooking
Shopping List
English Muffin Shaping Rings (Set of 4)
Spelt Whole Grain Flour
Spelt Berries
All Purpose Flour
Sourdough Starter (Dry)
Mockmill 100 Grain Mill
Red Star® Organic Instant Dry Yeast — 5 Packets
$7.50Magnetic Measuring Spoons
$17.00French Butter Keeper
$49.95Breadtopia’s Choice Kitchen Scale
$18.00Sourdough Crumpets (Yeast Too)