Traditional Homemade British Crumpet Recipe

OK, so first up you're going to want to heat your milk through a little bit on the stove. Just when you dip your finger in there, it feels slightly warm. This is just going to enable the batter to ferment a lot quicker. Next we're just going to mix the sea salt throughout the flour, if I can get the rest of it out of the bowl, and also the yeast. Here I'm not worrying about adding the salt and the yeast together, there'll be no problem whatsoever. Just give it a mix through the flour thoroughly, and then as soon as the milk has come up to temperature, we're going to add that to the batter and give it a really good whisk. And as I said, that milk wants to be just warm to the touch. Now give this a really good whisk to make sure everything's well incorporated. This is the consistency that you want your batter to be at, so if it's a little bit thick, just add a little more milk until we get this nice pouring consistency. So you could just cover this bowl with a cloth and leave the batter to rise, but I'm adding it to a jug because it's going to make it a lot easier when I want to pour the batter into the ring moulds. Get this covered up, and it's going to take about an hour or two hours to rise, depending on the temperature in your kitchen. And here you can see the red dot on the jug is the level that the batter started at, and now it's doubled in size easily, and we've got some nice pockets of air bubbles sitting on the top. Okay, into the pan with some butter. Now I'm using clarified butter, but you can just use ordinary butter, it's not a problem. And then I'm just going to give everything a nice shake up so that the ring moulds and the cast iron pan get nicely coated with the butter. Fill the non-stick rings halfway up with the batter, and this will make sure there's enough room for the crumpets to rise. As the crumpet cooks, air bubbles are going to travel up through the batter and eventually pop and dry out on the surface. This is going to give us that classic, cratered, textured look that we associate with a proper crumpet. And then whatever topping you choose to put on this crumpet is just going to ooze down and get trapped in all of those holes. And now you can see where all of the bubbles have started to burst on the surface, and the top of the crumpet is starting to dry out. Next we're going to get the rings off the crumpet and give them a quick flip over. They've cooked for long enough so they've got a lovely golden brown colour on the bottom. I have enough butter left in the pan so I don't need to add any more, I'm just going to give them a quick rotate to make sure they're all covered properly. After about 2 or 3 minutes, we'll have this golden colour on the tops as well, and then we can just take them out of the pan and leave them to cool on a wire rack while we cook the next batch. In my opinion, it's best to leave these to cool completely, and then either pop them through the toaster or give them a flash under the grill just to warm them through. And then the toppings are up to you, but for me, it's butter and strawberry jam all the way. There is no comparison between these and the store-bought ones, so for a little bit of time and a little bit of effort, these are well worth making, and they taste absolutely delicious. If you enjoyed the video, please hit the like button and subscribe, and I will see you again very soon.