The Barefoot Kitchen Witch

Two Crumpet Recipes

"And tho' there's no tea-supping and eating crumpet - it's a fine life!"  - (from the musical Oliver!)

I knew the word long before I knew the food.  English muffins were not an uncommon thing, but I don't really remember having crumpets at all as a child.  And when I bought them in the store one time, the just looked, well, weird.  Holes on one side...do you slice it in half, like an English muffin?  No...you just toast them and butter them and eat them.  Oh, okay.  And they were good.  And that was that.  Years ago.

Much more recently, Jen of Alien Spouse asked me if I'd ever tried making crumpets.

Hm!

Well, no, I hadn't.  But I knew right then that I would be doing so in the very near future.

I had a lovely morning of baking this past Sunday - two different batches of crumpets (from two different recipes) and the Fluted Polenta and Ricotta Cake for this week's Tuesdays With Dorie post.  So much fun. 

Why two different batches of crumpets?  Oh, because I'm just silly that way.  Having never made them, I really didn't have one I could vouch for, and instead of just trying one, and maybe not liking it, and then wondering if it was the recipe or just me, I figured if I tried two of them, then I'd really KNOW.  If that makes any sense.

I pulled recipes from two books - cookbooks that had sat on my mother's mother's bookshelves when she was alive, and had moved to my mom's shelves, and now reside on mine, since my mother downsized.  Recipes are marked with narrow strips of paper or thin cardboard; words written in my grandmother's hand - "Pease Pudding" and "Rock Cakes" and so on....

First version comes from the book Great British Cooking: A Well-Kept Secret by Jane Garmey, originally published in hardcover in 1984, and in paperback in 1992. 

Ingredients:

2  1/2 cups flour

2/3 cup water

1/4 oz active dry yeast (1 pkg)

1 tsp sugar

salt

2 T oil

Note - In order to make crumpets you will need 3 or 4 circular cookie cutters.  If you don't own any, a good substitute would be to remove both ends from an empty can that is approximately 3 inches wide and 2 inches deep.  (I used 4 cookie cutters ranging from around 3  1/4 to 4" in diameter.)

Sift the flour into a bowl and stand it on top of the stove. 

Heat the water in a saucepan over low heat until it is lukewarm.  (I just used lukewarm water from the tap.)    Take out 3 T of water and mix with the yeast and sugar in a cup.

Make a well in the flour and pour in first the yeast mixture and then the remaining water and a pinch of salt. 

Beat hard for 3 minutes, cover the bowl and stand it in a warm place

until the dough is well risen.  (This should take about 45 minutes.)

 

Beat the dough down and add a little warm water to turn the dough to a batter consistency.

(Eventually, I added a real lot of water in order to get it to what I considered a batter consistency.  And just so you know (if you don't already) it's not easy to incorporate water into a yeast dough.  The yeast dough behaves like a junior high school clique and it's really hard for the outsider (the water) to become a real member of the group.  It can be done - it just takes determination.)

Grease a pancake giddle or a large frying pan with a little of the oil.  Place the cookie cutters on the griddle or frying pan and when the oil is hot, pour in enough dough to reach about 3/4 inch high.

(It's me again.  At this point in my crumpet-making, the batter was still on the thick and doughy side.  It was too thick to cook properly (in my opinion) and it also cooked up too big, as you will see.)

Cook them for a few minutes until the bottoms are brown, the tops have become solid and holes have appeared all over the surface.  (If your batter isn't thinned enough, you won't get the holes like you're supposed to.  You'll get some around the edges, but not all through like you should.)

(I saw those holes and was all excited.  But my excitement was premature, as the holes never appeared in the center area - just around the edges.)

(If the batter is too thick this will not happen and you should add more water to it.) (Yes.  I can vouch for that.)

Remove the rings,

turn the crumpets (crumpets?  They look more like English Muffins to my silly American eyes.)

and cook them for about 2 more minutes before removing them from the heat and draining on a paper towel. 

(See what I mean?  Um...London, we have a problem.  These look like damn good English muffins.  Thomas would be proud.  But they ain't crumpets.  See how the tops browned like that?  And flattened?  That's not what they're supposed to look like.  There should still be visible holes that run all the way to the other side and stop there only because that was where the batter first hit the pan.)

Repeat this process until you have used up all the dough.

(I didn't repeat the process EXACTLY.  Like I said, I finally thinned the batter so that it really was a batter and not just a loose dough...and I used less of it in the rings...but even when I got more holes appearing on top, they still flattened out when I flipped them over.  Finally, with the last two rings, I just didn't flip them at all.  Because I was irritated, and I wanted there to be crumpet holes!)

Anyway, here's the whole batch.

They still look like English muffins to me, except for the pale half-cooked two on top there.

We sampled them, and, as I expected, they were rather disappointing.  But I believe some of that had more to do with my inexperience in making them than it did with the recipe.

Here's one of the English Muffins crumpets, after I split it open with a fork.

Okay, yeah, we've got some nooks and crannies, all right.  But that wasn't the plan.  And look at all the gummy dougy part that just stuck to the fork.  I realize it's not been toasted yet, but still.

It's still not all that appealing, is it?

Toast the crumpets and serve with lots of butter.

Makes 12-15.  (I got 10, but I was using some larger cutters, too.)

I even took a "pretty" shot of a toasted one (one of the thinner ones), just...well...because.

(Okay, and we don't have a toaster at the moment, so I've been using the oven as a sort of palatial toaster when needed.  It works just fine.  But this batch of crumpets did NOT.  Look how blah and gummy they are inside.  Well, if you can't tell, trust me - they were.  Even my daughter, who loves bread products more than she loves her pink sparkly shoes, handed her half of the greasy blob back to me and shook her head with a look of polite disgust.  "I don't like it." 

~~~~~

Okay, so...next batch.  At least I've learned a bit about how the consistency of the batter is supposed to be, right?  Maybe I'll have better luck with these next ones.

The next recipe comes from A Taste of London: World Famous Recipes With Nostalgic Photographs by Theodora Fitzgibbon.  It was published in 1975 and appears to have gone out of print.

Ingredients:

1 lb (4 cups) plain flour

1 tsp salt

1 tsp sugar

1 pint (2 cups) warm milk

1 heaped teaspoon dried yeast

2 tsp warm water

1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda

Sift the flour into a basin and add the salt. 

Heat the milk until tepid then dissolve the sugar in half of it, and sprinkle the yeast on top.  (Do not make the milk too warm for you will kill the yeast.) 

Leave for 10 minutes or until it froths up, then add to the centre of the flour with the rest of the warm milk and beat very well for 5 or 10 minutes. 

Cover and leave to rise in a warm place. 

(The book doesn't say how long to leave it, or how much you want the dough to rise, so I just go by the usual bread-making "until doubled in bulk" rule of thumb.)

Dissolve the bicarbonate of soda in the warm water

and add to the risen dough, then leave, covered, to rise again.  (Sorry - no photo of that second rising.  It looked a lot like the first one.)

If you have 3-4 inch plain rings (as discussed earlier, I used cookie cutters ranging in size from 3  1/4 to 4 inches in diameter), then lightly grease them, also a griddle, or a heavy frying pan, and heat them up as you would for pancakes or drop scones. 

(Pancakes are the key here, at least they were to my brain at the time.  I know about pancakes.  I know about how the bubbles create holes all over the upper surface of the pancake while it's on the griddle, and so this kind of switched on a lightbulb in my head.  Not just the fact that crumpets are supposed to have holes like that, but also - what it means in terms of the cooking status of your food.  You want to cook these pretty much all the way through on the first side, and just kind of finish them off, color-wise, on the other.  The thinness of the batter is key - I had to add a fair amount of water to the dough/batter after that second rise to get it to the right consistency), and associating it with pancake batter helps, mentally.  At least it helps me.)

Put the rings, if using them on to the hot griddle or pan, and drop tablespoonfuls of the mixture into them or into the pan. 

(Okay, here we go again.  I did that...)

(And here are the first bubbles forming around the edges...and I didn't fill them as full this time, either.)

(And now we've got some bubbles in the middle...)

Let it cook until the top is set and full of holes, and the bottom a pale biscuit colour. 

(Bingo!)

(Isn't that lovely?  Look at the CRATERS!  And within them - more little holes!  Yay!  And - I know it's hard to tell in this shot, but if you look at the edge on the lower right, the color is more yellow than white.  This is where the surface has dried during this initial phase of cooking.  Most of the top is still white, but just let it sit there a little longer, and eventually the whole top of the crumpet will look kind of dry and off-white.  THAT is what you're looking for.)

Remove the rings, if using, turn the crumpets over and let them dry out for 2 minutes on the other side. 

Regulate the heat, especially if using electricity, so that the giddle does not become too hot and burn.  (What I ended up doing, once I got the hang of the whole thing, was to lower the heat on the back burner use that half of the griddle for the finishing off.  I kept the front burner at a higher heat (it's also the "power burner" on my stove) to do the initial cooking.  That worked out nicely.)

   

Remove the crumpets with a cloth, and let them cool on a rack.  When serving, toast them lightly on both sides and serve with butter on the top side (with the holes).

Makes about 12.  (I think, by some strange quirk of fate, that I ended up with more than that.  Hard to say - these were so much better, we all ate a bunch before I could count them.  These - when toasted - were crisp on the outside, and slightly chewy inside, and deliciously buttery throughout.)

~~~~~

Okay then!  That was actually a lot of fun for me - no, really.  I like to compare recipes, for one.

(True story - years ago, some friends of my parents had a bumper crop of zucchini.  I said I'd make zucchini bread.  I'd never make zucchini bread before, so I didn't know which recipe to use.  I looked through all my cookbooks (no internet way back then) and found, if I remember right, 17 recipes.  Yes.  SEVENTEEN.  So I figured out how much flour and sugar and zucchini and whatever else I'd need to make one batch (which, in some cases, actually meant two or three loaves) from each recipe.  I ended up with twenty-something loaves of zucchini bread.  Gave some away.  Froze some.  Tried them all.  I have no idea, now, which recipe was the best.  Or which cookbook it might have come from.  And I don't care.  It was just a lot of fun - that insane marathon of zucchini bread baking.)

And, while I think the yuck factor in the first batch was MOSTLY my doing, I also think that, even if I'd done it all correctly, I'd still like the flavor of the second batch better.  Maybe it was the milk in the dough.  Or the fact that the first one only called for a pinch of salt and the second one had a whole teaspoon.  Granted, the second batch had nearly twice as much flour and would need more flour, but, using that logic, the first batch should have had at least half a teaspoon of salt - not just a little pinch. 

And so, if I were to recommend one version, it would be the recipe from A Taste of London.

And - if you are toying with the idea of making them at home, I say - DO IT!  It's fun. They're yummy.  Look on the whole thing as an adventure.  One well worth the journey.

Especially slathered in butter.  With a nice, hot cup of tea.  Served on some of your great-grandmother's (if I remember that correctly) inexpensive china with the pretty pansy faces.

It's a fine, fine life.

Potato Rye Bread with Onion and Caraway

 

I've added a new category - I might also include links to it under the recipe categories. 

The category is "Learning from Mistakes" and I'm including it because in baking and cooking - just like in every other facet of life, we make mistakes, and the best thing to do with a mistake is to learn something from it.

I made this rye bread last month - right after the whole  Corned Beef Project had been completed.  (If you want to read about the entire project, go over on the right and scroll down until you find that heading.  It was about a week and a half long project that I plan to repeat again next year.)  Anyway - I figured I'd make a loaf of rye so I could make a Reuben sandwich for my husband with some of the leftover corned beef.  We had sauerkraut in the freezer, I had cheese, we clearly  had the corned beef, and I could whip up a Thousand Island Dressing easily enough.  All that was needed was the rye.  And I figured rather than just go buy a loaf somewhere, I should (not could, but should) make it myself.

I found a recipe in one of my bread books, I prepped all my ingredients, I took pictures all along the way as I made the bread...it smelled amazing baking in the oven.

And it came out flat.  Flat like an onion and rye loaf of focaccia.  Not exactly the way it should have come out.

And so I was rather irritated with myself because I know I can successfully make a loaf of bread.  So what did I do wrong?

Once I sliced into it, I saw the problem - there was very little lift inside.  It would have been easy to say "well, that's because it was so heavy.  The onion mixture weighed it down."  Except that I couldn't blame the onions.  Really, it was probably because I didn't knead it long enough.

Scratch that.  No "probably" about it.  I rushed one of the most important parts of the bread making process.  And that's why my bread baked off the way it did.

So, lesson learned.  Don't rush the kneading.  Duh.  I know better.  But sometimes we all need reminders, don't we?  At least I do.

And that's the lesson in this post.  But on the good side, the bread tasted fabulous, and I made an awesome, albiet skinny, Reuben for my husband, which he couldn't finish, so I had some, and yeah, it tasted really good. 

Here's the recipe, and pictures, and you can see, at the end, how the bread came out, because I didn't let the gluten develop enough, which meant there wasn't enough structure to support the bread as the yeast did its work to make the dough rise.  Sort of a house of twigs, rather than bricks.

Enough analysis.  Let's bake.

The book I used is Secrets of a Jewish Baker by George Greenstein.  One of the cool features of this book is Chapter Ten - "Twelve Menus:  A Morning of Baking."  Each menu includes about 4-5 different bread recipes, sometimes all yeasted, sometimes a mix of yeasted and quick.  Each menu or program takes somewhere between 2-5 hours to complete, depending on the kinds of breads made.  The programs are all lessons in time management as well - ordinarily when we make bread, we make a loaf or two of A bread.  Or a batch of muffins or a quick bread.  But in the same time frame we might use for that one recipe, instead, if we prep well and pay attention to what we're doing, we can produce multiple loaves.  Pretty impressive, no?

Anyway.  I didn't do a whole morning of baking menu.  I just used the recipe for "Potato Rye Bread with Onion and Caraway."  Why this one?  For one thing, it didn't involve making a sour starter, which I would have had to do the day before.  I wanted the bread for that evening.  This bread is something you make in one day.  Also - I had potatoes and onions because I'd bought more than enough for the Corned Beef and Vegetable dinner.  And I had Caraway seeds because of the Irish Whiskey Soda Bread I'd made for that same meal.  So I was all set.

Here's what you need:

1 medium to small yellow onion, minced

2 T caraway seeds, or more to taste

Pinch salt

Vegetable oil or olive oil, for sauteing

1 cup warm water, preferably potato water

1 pkg active dry yeast

1 medium to small potato, mashed (about 1/2 cup mashed potato)

1 T sugar

1 T shortening

3 T milk powder (omit for nondairy bread) (I didn't use any because I didn't have any.)

2 cups rye flour

1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour

1  1/2 tsp salt

Flour, for dusting work top

Vegetable oil, for coating bowl

Rye flour or cornmeal, for dusting baking sheet.  (I used cornmeal) 

And here's what you do:

Scrub the potato.  Cook, quartered, in 2  1/2 cups boiling water until soft (about 10 minutes).  Let cool, then peel and mash.  (Save the water - you'll use it in the recipe!)

In a small skillet over medium-low heat, saute the onion, caraway seeds, and the pinch of salt in the oil just long enough to soften the onion. 

Set aside.

DOUGH

In a large bowl dissolve the yeast in the warm water.  Add the mashed potato, sugar, shortening, milk powder (if used), flours, and the 1  1/2 tsp salt. 

Stir with a wooden spoon until the dough comes away from the sides of the bowl.

(I used my stand mixer and the dough hook.  Unfortunately, I didn't let it run long enough.  Also, I didn't look through the other directions for this recipe - Mr. Greenstein also gives separate measurements and directions for use with a stand mixer.  Another lesson learned.)

Turn out the dough onto a floured work surface and knead.  If the dough is moist and sticky, add more all-purpose flour 1/4 cup at a time.  Knead until elastic (5 to 8 minutes).  The dough will be softer than usual because of the rye flour, and it will tend to feel sticky.

(When using the dough hook and stand mixer, once the flour is incorporated, use the first setting and beat until the dough comes away from the sides of the bowl.  Add more all-purpose flour if needed.  Should be about 5-8 minutes.  Turn out onto floured work surface, knead a bit...

 

 

and shape into a ball.)

Transfer the dough to an oiled bowl and turn to coat. 

Cover and allow to rise until doubled in volume (45-60 minutes). 

Punch down, shape into 1 or 2 rounds, and allow rest, covered, for 15 minutes.Knead in the reserved onion mixture.

SHAPING

Shape into 1 or 2 round loaves.  Place on a rye flour or cornmeal-dusted baking sheet.

Proof until doubled in size. 

Dust the tops with additional all-purpose flour and cut decorative slashes.

BAKING

Bake with steam in a preheated 375 degree oven for 35-45 minutes.  (For the steam, I just squirted water into the oven with a spray bottle.  There are better methods, but I didn't use them this time.)  If 1 large loaf is made, allow for additional oven time.  The bread is done when tapping the bottom with your fingertips produces a hollow thump.  Let cool on a wire rack.

It looks kind of nice from above...

And here you can see that it rose to a majestic inch and a half in height.  Actually, it sort of slumped down to that, because it was taller after the second rise.

But we've already gone over all of that.

And despite the obvious flaws, it still made some yummy sandwiches.

Corned Beef Project: Day 8 - Royal Hibernian Brown Loaf

This one is from Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Breads, but I found this sort of recipe - a brown soda bread - in just about all of the bread books I was looking through.  I didn't find the American version until I checked in with King Arthur.  And it makes sense - raisins would be more likely used for special occasion breads, holiday breads.  And I don't even know if raisins were all that common an ingredient in Ireland long ago.  I kind of doubt it.

Here's what Mr. Clayton had to say about this recipe:

     "The Irish national loaf is brown soda bread, and this version from the Royal Hibernian Hotel in Dublin is one of the best - and richest.  The hotel serves the bread warm and thinly sliced.  Its richness comes from a generous portion of butter and eggs.

     It is a striking loaf when it comes from the oven, unfolded like a giant blossom along cuts across the top."

So anyway - this is not a particularly sweet bread, although there is a bit of sugar in it.  The rather coarse texture reminds me of cornbread, and the flavor is dark and hearty and no-nonsense.

Ready?  Here's what you will need:

2   1/2 cups whole wheat flour, stone ground preferred

1 cup all-purpose flour, approximately

2 T sugar

1   1/2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter, room temperature

1 egg

1   1/4 cups buttermilk, room temperature (I used a tablespoon of white vinegar plus enough milk to bring it up to a cup and a quarter)

And here's what you do:

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. 

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F twenty minutes before baking.

(Directions for using food processor follow, because that's what I used.)

Attach the steel blade.

Place the whole-wheat flour in the work bowl and add the sugar, soda and salt. 

Pulse to blend.  Drop in the butter

and pulse 2 (or more, if needed) times to cut it into small pieces.

In a bowl beat the egg and buttermilk together.  Pour the mixture through the feed tube.

Turn the machine on briefly to allow the flour to absorb the liquid.  Let stand for 3 minutes to allow the flour to fully absorb the buttermilk.

Add 1/2 cup white flour through the feed tube, and turn on the processor only long enough to mix in the flour.  The dough is not to be kneaded.  Remove and feel the dough.  If it is wet, add more flour, but frugally.  Scrape from the bowl and pat into a ball with the hands.  Sprinkle with flour if necessary to control the stickiness.  (I used about 3/4 of a cup of the flour.  It will vary, depending on temp and humidity in your kitchen.)

Shape into a plump round ball. 

Pat down the top slightly, and with a knife or razor blade cut a half inch deep cross on the top.

Place the loaf on the baking sheet, and bake until it has browned and has opened dramatically along the cuts, about 45 minutes.

Remove the bread from the oven and place on a wire rack to cool before cutting into thin slices.

 

Although it can be frozen, it is better freshly baked. 

Like I said, it's not all that sweet - but it's flavorful with a hearty texture, and I think it will make a nice accompaniment to out dinner tonight.

Corned Beef Project: Day 8 - Irish Whiskey Soda Bread

Could also be called American Irish Whiskey Soda Bread, because of the addition of carroway seeds and raisins (or in this case, because I was feeling wild and daring, I used half currants and half golden raisins).  The recipes I found for Irish Irish Soda Breads didn't have these extras.  I'll post one of those recipes as well.

Soda breads (which use baking soda for leavening instead of yeast) are quick and easy to make, so if you're new to breads and hesitant to mess with yeast (which you shouldn't be), give something like this a try.

Anyway - I made two breads yesterday during my prepping frenzy.

First up, this recipe, which I found in The King Arthur Flour 200th Anniversary Cookbook on page 79.  The notes say

"Here's another American version from Michael Jubinsky.  This one contains baking powder to help with the leavening and is flavored with Irish Whiskey."

The first recipe I'd looked at (on page 78) was for "American Irish Soda Bread" - and the only reason I didn't make that one is because it calls for cornstarch, and, surprise surprise, I'm all out.  So I went with the other one.  And I'll be perfectly happy to stick with this one, because it is delicious.

Here's what you need:

4 cups King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour

3 T sugar

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

4 T (1/2 stick) butter (cut into small pieces)

1   1/2 cups raisins (or in this case, half currants and half golden raisins)

1 tsp caraway seeds (optional)