Ingredients
370g cold water
225g plain white flour, like Matthews Organic White Plain Wheat Flour
40g wholemeal spelt, wheat or emmer flour, like Stoate's Organic Spelt Flour
2g fine salt, like Saltan Himalayan Super-Fine Pink Rock Salt
15g brown sugar
15g baking powder, the best and easiest way is by using one 15g sachets of our Bioreal Organic Baking Powder With Pure Cream Of Tartar
75g ripe sourdough, spent 1-2 day-old sourdough is fine
5g malt or cider vinegar
to finish
Butter and extra flour (spelt or rye are good) for the rings
Cooking oil for the pan
With our BakeryBits Handmade Heavy-Duty Stainless Crumpet Rings you can be cooking perfect crumpets at home, and with our sourdough recipe you can add ever more flavour than the supermarket ones.
Most crumpet recipes use a combination of yeast and baking powder but we’ve found that the best flavour is achieved with a combination of ripe or even spent 1-2 day-old sourdough with our Bioreal baking powder. Based on my 2018 recipe here, I’ve added an autolyse step which allows the gluten and natural sugars to form in the flour before the sourdough and baking powder are added.
Mixed together in a bowl with our BakeryBits sturdy Danish dough whisk makes putting the mixture together easy and quick to clean up.
Makes about 8-10 x 9cm crumpets
Method
For the rings: rub cold butter evenly and generously around the inside of each ring, then dust a thick layer of flour on top of that. I sit the ring in a small breakfast bowl quart-filled with flour and rotate the ring it that. After cooking and removing the crumpets I drop the empty rings into a sink of warm water, and find they clean super-fast, and are ready for re-using in minutes.
For the crumpet mix: pour the cold water into a bowl and beat in the white and wholemeal flour until smooth using our Danish dough whisk. Leave for 20-60 minutes, not benefit to leaving it longer but it won't come to harm either. Then beat in the salt, brown sugar, baking powder, sourdough starter and vinegar until smooth. At this point I scrape it into a big jug, ¾ filling it as the mixture will rise up, then leave it to one side for 20-30 minutes.
Have your frying pan ready – ideally a thick-bottomed one or our Welsh Baking Stone – and get it medium-hot. Generously oil the pan surface. Place the buttered and floured rings on the hot pan and leave a minute to heat up. Then pour the crumpet mixture into the rings to somewhere around or just under halfway full. Cook the crumpets for about 5-10 minutes. As the bubbles rise on top and set there may be a few stubborn ones that won’t open, so just prick the tops of those with a skewer.
I finish the tops with the flame from a bowl torch, but you can alternatively place the under a hot grill briefly until the tops scorch slightly. Leave to cool on a wire rack while you clean the rings and cook more.
