Everyone loves a crumpet and if you take a few minutes to make your own – you know you are winning at life. If you make a good batch they can freeze pretty well – ideal for toasting in front of your ESSE wood burner on these dreich late winter days as Spring fails to make its presence felt and the time for cosiness is well and truly still upon us.
Cooking time: 10 mins
Preparation time: 10 minutes
Proving time between half and one and a half hours – for best result prove somewhere warm – like on top of your ESSE cooker!
Set your ESSE cooker top to around 50 %
Ingredients
- 500g organic bread flour
- 10g salt
- 15g dried fast acting yeast or 10 g fresh yeast
- 600g warm water
Method
- Mix all the ingredients together in a planetary mixer with a whisk or k beater attached, or use a whisk followed by a stout wooden spoon in a mixing bowl If you don’t have a mixer.
- Allow the cross between a dough and a batter to ferment until it’s all bubbly and active.
- You can either make thin free form crumpets or thicker more traditional crumpets, if you have a few crumpet rings.
To cook the crumpets
4 crumpet rings, and a little melted butter and a pastry brush
If you want to simply make thin free form crumpets, simply brush the cooker top with a little butter (you might get a small amount of smoke in the kitchen, life eh?, spoon tablespoons of the mixture directly onto the cooker top (you can use a non-stick silicone heat mat if you are fussy about your stove top….. Pop the lid down over them to help keep things moist and steamy.
Allow them to cook almost all the way through, before flipping them for a final minute on the top side. You can make GIANT crumpets this way – which are also fun, you can then pile stuff on the top like a giant canape and serve it cut up like a cake for folk to help themselves to, there’s something very hearty and joyful about the idea of a giant crumpet.
If you wish to make fancy round ones that are a bit thicker, place your lightly buttered crumpet rings on the lightly buttered stove top and spoon in enough batter to get about 2/3 of the way up the side of the ring – you may want to brush the inside of your crumpet rings with a little butter to help them come out later on – or you may have fancy non-stick crumpet rings. It’s a good idea to cover these thicker ones with an upside down wok or pan, to help the steam generated by the cooking process to assist the cooking, you could just shut the lid down over the top but beware they may rise above the top of the rings and then you will have a rather messy situation occurring – trust me about this.
These will take a little longer to cook as they are thicker so watch for them burning on the bottom – of they start to do so, turn the cooker top down a little more and try again in ten minutes – but don’t get too fussy here, it’s meant to be casual and rustic, we are not trying to re-create the uniform ultra-standardisation of the supermarket crumpet here.
Once they are more or less cooked – flip them for a minute and remove the ring, re butter and go again with a fresh batch. Set the cooked ones to cool on a wire rack and then when you fancy one, toast it up and go mad with the toppings – anything from butter or cheese all the way through to left over curry works a treat on a toasted homemade crumpet – so don’t limit yourself to the everyday if you feel like going mad!
Recipe created by Tim Maddams. Tim is a chef, food writer and cookery teacher who produces seasonal recipes for ESSE at his home in Inverness using ingredients grown in his kitchen garden. ESSE first met Tim over ten years ago when he regularly co-featured in the hit TV series River Cottage. During his time as head chef at River Cottage Tim pioneered ethical, local, seasonal produce and became a key spokesperson in the area of responsibly-sourced food.
Tim’s aim is to show off the “tremendous versatility” of the ESSE 600 X electric range cooker. The new 600 X has ESSE’s classic heat storage construction, patented ovens, beautiful colour finishes and the reassuring ‘solidity’ with modern, electric controllability and responsiveness.
