Crumpets

I honestly do not understand how it came to be that we have bags and bags of tough, crusty English muffins at every grocery store across the nation, but zero crumpets. Crumpets are the superior jam vessel. They are soft and chewy and toasty and delicious, and they are one of the things I had the hardest time saying goodbye to. So I made some, and you can, too, because they're not even hard.

Firstly, buy some crumpet rings. 

Then find a recipe. I looked at lots, and decided to start with Paul Hollywood's recipe, because, you know. He's the British baking expert guy. Also if I fuck it up I want it to be his fault. I SAW WHAT YOU DID TO S'MORES, PAUL.

I made a half batch and used butter instead of sunflower oil for greasing the griddle, because I don't have that. We also don't have strong flour (bread flour) in these parts, so I just used regular all-purpose. They were still good, don't @ me.

This will take about 1.5 hours; I made them after dinner for the next morning.

Half batch of crumpets for the uncultured American kitchen (makes 6)

6 oz all purpose flour (it's like 1 1/2 cups)

1 tsp yeast

1/2 tsp sugar

6 fl oz warm milk (about 3/4 cup)

6 fl oz warm water (same, come on)

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

butter for greasing

Whisk together flour and yeast. Dissolve sugar in warm milk, pour over flour. Beat with a wooden spoon for 2 min, until smooth. This is hard, do it anyway. Cover and leave it for about 20 minutes, until it rises and then starts to fall a bit. It took closer to 30 min for me, my yeast was frisky. Mix the salt and baking soda into the warm water, pour most of it over the bubbly batter, and stir it until it's creamy, adding more as necessary, until it's like a nice gooey pancake batter. Leave it alone for another 20 min to rise again.

Heat a griddle to med-low and grease your rings. When the griddle is hot enough to make butter bubble up nicely but not sizzle and burn, put the rings on the griddle. Plorp enough batter into each ring to cover the bottom completely. Leave it alone to cook, until the top is set and bubbles have popped, about 10 minutes. Gently get a spatula under them and flip the whole ring to lightly brown the tops for a minute or two. Remove to cool, and slip them out of the rings. 

They're best the next day - pop them in the toaster for 2 min and then load them up with butter, jam, nutella, fruit, whatever. I had mine with greek yogurt and honey. Perfect.

If I find a better recipe, I will report. This one was pretty good, though. Some recipes don't brown the tops, some use fats in the batter. I will TRY THEM ALL. Get ready, family.