Homemade Crumpets/Pikelets

Every now and again we miss certain English foods; crumpets being one of them. I was brought up calling them Pikelets. 

Although not a Greek dish, crumpets are cheap and easy to make and all the ingredients are available locally. 

 I followed the Jamie Oliver recipe, which even explains how to make your own butter.

 https://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/bread-recipes/classic-crumpets/

I have added some photos to explain the various simple stages.

1. Warm 400ml milk. Dissolve  a sachet of yeast and 1 tsp sugar in the milk with 100ml of tepid water. Leave in a warm place for 15 minutes until frothy.

 2. Sift 300g SP flour, 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda and 1 tsp salt in a large bowl. Make a well and pour in the yeast mixture.

3. Whisk from the centre outwards until the consistency of double cream. 

4. Cover with a damp t towel and set aside for 45 minutes until bubbles are on the surface.

5. Grease four egg rings with veg oil. Wipe oil around a frying pan on med heat.

6. When hot, ladle batter into each ring (1/2 - 2/3 full). Cook for 5 minutes until bubbles are on the surface.

7. Once the bubbles have burst, leaving little holes, use tongs to lift off the rings and flip the crumpets over and cook for 1 minute on this side. Re - grease and repeat. 

 Top tips.

Remove the pan totally from the heat when removing crumpets from the rings and use kitchen towel to wipe the pan and rings before cooking the second batch.

Do not double the ingredients its best to make a second mixture.

 Serve with fresh butter.                                                         Freeze in batches of 4.

   

If you don't have egg/crumpet rings and want to be thrifty, start collecting tuna tins and cut the tin to make a ring.